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Gunner Depew 



BY 

ALBERT N. DEPEW 

Ex-Gunner and Chief Petty Officer, U.S. Navy 

Member of the Foreign Legion of France 

Captain Gun Turret, French Battleship Ca.ssa.rd 

Winner of the Croix de Guerre 



GASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD 

London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 

1918 



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To 

JAMES WATSON GERARD 

who was strong for the men 
in the German prison camps 
and was a real friend to me 



PREFACE 

Until I had been in Chicago for some time talking 
about my war experiences, I never had any idea of 
writing a book. It was about the last thing in the 
world I ever thought of doing. But people who 
heard me talk always wondered why I didn't. Then 
a chap, who had been "over there" and written 
about it, said : " Oh ! You can do it ! " So I began 
to take observations, as you might say. 

One man said I had nothing to do but to write 
about all the places I had been to, everything I'd 
seen or heard, and everything that had happened to 
me. " Some" job, as I found out. 

Well, anyhow, I've done it, and I found I re- 
membered more things than I thought I could — 
some things I'd as lief forget. I'm not a writer, but 
I have done the best I could, and I hope you will like 
my book. 

I want to thank all the people who have been so 

good to me since my return to America. Somehow, 

I never seem to know just how to do it when I see 

them. 

A. N. D. 



CONTENTS 



1. In the American Navy 

2. The War Breaks 

3. In the Foreign Legion 

4. In the Firing Line 

5. With the " 75's " 

6. Fritz does a little V Strafeing 

7. Stopping the Huns' at" Dixmude 

8. On Runner Service 

9. Laid Up for Repairs 

10. Hell at Gallipoli 

11. At the Dardanelles 

12. A Pal Crucified 

18. Limeys, Anzacs and Poilus 

14. The Croix de Guerre 

15. Je Suis Blesse . 

16. Captured by the " Moewe " 

17. Landed in Germany . 

18. " Pack up your Troubles " 

19. German Prison Camps. 



1 

10 

18 

28 

43 

55 

71 

84 

94 

109 

118 

136 

148 

158 

174 

185 

201 

218 

233 



Vlll 



Contents 



CHAPTER 

20. KuLTUR — The Real Stuff 

21. A Visit from Mr. Gerard 

22. The Hell Hole of Germany 

23. Despair — and Freedom 

24. Back in the States 





. 244 




. 256 




. 270 




. 278 




. 291 



GUNNER DEPEW 

CHAPTER I 

IN THE AMERICAN NAVY 

My father was a seaman, so, naturally, all my life 
I heard a great deal about ships and the sea. Even 
when I was a little boy, in Walston, Pennsylvania, 
I thought about them a whole lot and wanted to be 
a sailor — especially a sailor in the United States 
Navy. 

You might say I was brought up in the water. 
As far back as I can remember, I was a good swim- 
mer. When my mother and I were living in Walston 
and she wanted me for anything, she always sent 
down to the creek for me, because she knew if I was 
not at home, I would be swimming. Then, in 
Yonkers, there was a pier at the Yerks and Com- 
pany docks which, with the lumber piled on it, was 
seventy-five feet above the Hudson, and I used to 
dive off it many times every day in the summer. 
This was when I was about eleven years old. 

When I was twelve I went to sea as cabin boy 
on the whaler Therifus, out of Boston. She was an 
old square-rigged sailing ship, built more for work 



2 Gunner Depew 

than for speed. We were out four months on my 
first cruise, and were badly battered, especially in a 
storm on the Newfoundland Banks, where we lost 
our instruments, and had a hard time navigating the 
ship. I got knocked about, too, for there was a big 
whaler aboard, who used to beat me up almost every 
day. He thought I did not put on enough style in 
bringing the grub to the forecastle. I was not a 
very fancy waiter, I guess. Later, I often used to 
think of that big bruiser when I was in the navy and 
my fists were making a reputation for themselves. 
Whaling crews work on shares, and during the two 
years I was on the Therijus my shares amounted to 
fourteen hundred dollars (£280). 

Then I shipped as first-class helmsman on the 
British tramp Southerndown, a twin-screw steamer, 
out of Liverpool. Many people are surprised that a 
fourteen-year old boy should be helmsman on an 
ocean-going craft, but all over the world you will 
see young lads doing their turn at the wheel. On a 
sailing ship like the Therifus, they have four men 
to the wheel ; on a steamer, one ; it is the steam steer- 
ing-gear that makes the difference. I was on the 
South erndown two years, and in that time visited 
most of the important ports of Europe — Spezia, 
Bilbao, Cadiz, Brest, Liverpool, Odessa, Archangel, 
Hamburg, Rotterdam. There is nothing like a 
tramp steamer if you want to see the world. The 
SouthenidGwn is the vessel which, in the fall of 



In the American Navy 3 

1917, sighted a German U-boat rigged up like a 

sailing ship. 

Although I liked visiting the foreign ports, I got 
tired of the Southemdown after a while, and at the 
end of a voyage which landed me in New York, I 
decided to go into the United States Navy. After 
lying by for a week or two, I enlisted and was 
assigned to duty as a second-class fireman. 

People have said they thought I was pretty small 
to be a fireman; they have the idea that firemen 
must be big men. Well, I am 5 feet 7i inches in 
height, and w^hen I was sixteen I v;as as tall as I 
am now and weighed 168 pounds. I was a w^hole lot 
heftier then, too, for that was before my introduc- 
tion to "kultur" in German prison camps, and 
life there is not exactly fattening— not exactly. I 
do not know why it is, but if you will notice the 
navy firemen— the lads with the red stripes around 
their left shoulders— you will find that almost all of 
them are small men. But they are a hefty lot. 

Now, in the navy, they always worry a new- 
comer until he shovrs that he can take care of himself, 
and I got my whack very soon after I went into 
Uncle Sam's service. I was washing my clothes in 
a bucket on the forecastle deck, and every garby 
(sailor) who came along used to give me or the 
bucket a kick, and spill one or both of us. Each 
time I moved to some other place, but I always 
seemed to be in somebody's way. Finally, I saw a 



4 Gunner Depew 

marine coming. I was nowhere near him. but he 
hauled out of his course to come up to me and gave 
the bucket a boot that sent it twenty feet away, at 
the same time handing me a clout on the ear that 
about knocked me down. Now, I did not exactly 
know what a marine was, and this fellow had so 
many stripes on his sleeves that I thought he must 
be some sort of officer, so I just stood by. There 
was a gold-stripe (that is, a commissioned officer) 
on the bridge and I knew that if anything was 
wrong, he would cut in, so I kept looking up at him, 
but he stayed where he was, seeing everything, and 
never saying a word. And all the time the marine 
kept slamming me about and telling me to " get the 
hell out of there." 

Finally I said to myself, "I'll get this guy if it's 
the brig [cells] for a month." So I planted him one 
in the kidneys and another in the mouth, and he 
went clean up against the rail. But he came back 
at me strong, and we were at it for some time. 

But when it was over the gold-stripe came down 
from the bridge and shook hands with me ! 

After this they did not tease me much, excepting 
the regular tricks, like tying a sleeping man's feet to 
his hammock, such as you have got to expect, which 
you pull off on the next man when his turn comes. 
This was the beginning of a certain reputation that 
I had in the navy for fist- work. Later I had a repu- 
tation for swimming, too. That first day they began 



In the American Navy 5 

calling me " Chink," though I don't know why, and 
it has been my nickname in the navy ever since. 

It is a curious thing, and I never could under- 
stand it, but garbies and marines never mix. The 
marines are good men and great fighters, aboard and 
ashore, but we garbies never have a word for them, . 
nor they for us. On shore leave abroad, we pal up 
with foreign garbies even, but hardly ever with a 
marine. Of course, they are with us strong in case 
we have a scrap with a liberty party from some 
foreign ship — ^they cannot keep out of a fight any 
more than we can — but after it is over, they are on 
their way at once and we on ours. The only other 
navy that has a marine corps is the British, although 
the French have a Marine Infantry that garrisons 
ports, but does not serve aboard ships. The British 
call their men the Royal Marine Light Infantry, and 
a Limey garby told me it was the same way with 
them. They keep to themselves and the Limey 
garbies do the same. But he did not know why, 
either. He said it always had been that way in their 
navy, and I have heard it always has been with us. 

There are lots of things like that in the navy that 
you cannot find out the reason for, and I think it is 
because sailors change their ways so little. They do 
a great many things in the navy because the navy 
always has done them. I never saw an old garby 
who wasn't always telling the young ones what 
things were like in his day and advising them to do 



6 Gunner Depew 

as he did. Of course, sailors have much changed 
since the days of the saihng ships, because their work 
is so different, and sailors change when ships change ; 
but ships alter more than sailors. And I think it 
always will be that wa}'. 

A few sentences back I spoke of a British sailor as 
a "Limey." The old British ships used to carry 
large quantities of lime-juice, because they thought 
it was a cure for the scurvy. So, all over the world, 
British ships are called " Lime-juicers " and their 
sailors " Limeys." There is a saying in the merchant 
marine that the bucko (or tyrannical) mate of a Lime- 
juicer is the toughest guy in the world, but they do 
not think so in the navy. 

I kept strictly on the job as a fireman, but I 
wanted to get into the gun turrets. It was slow 
work for a long time. I had to serve as second-class 
fireman for four months, first-class for eight months, 
and in the engine-room as water-tender for a year. 

Then, after serving on the Des Moines as a gun- 
loader, I was transferred to the Iowa, and finally 
worked up to a gun-pointer. After a time I got my 
C. F. O. rating — chief petty officer, first-class 
gunner. 

During my four years in the American navy I 
won three cups in swimming races. The first was in 
a Y.M.C.A. race from Battery Park, New York 
City, to the Statue of Liberty. I had to join the 
Y.M.C.A. to qualify for the race. I won my second 



In the American Navy 7 

cup in London in a two-miles' race in the Thames, 
starting from Tilbury Docks. There were about 
seventy men in this race, which was held by the Lam- 
port & Holt and the Atlantic Transport Lines. Then, 
at Brest, the French and American fleets held a race, 
and I won my third cup. I understand there were 
four hundred men in this race. 

Somehow, there is always somebody for a sailor 
to fight in every port in the world, and I met my 
share of them. Just as some people know a place by 
its restaurants, or theatres, or art galleries, so sailors 
know a port by the fights they have had there, or 
perhaps some particular kind of food. There was a 
big porter in Constantinople that I always battled 
with, and a lighterman in Archangel. Genoa we 
liked because of the macaroni ; we used to eat yards 
of it. 

We got to be fond of goats' milk, too. In Italy, 
when you want any milk, they round up a herd of 
goats, and work out a quart or whatever quantity 
you want. So, while one of us bargained with the 
milkman and had him draw off a quart or so, the 
rest of us would chase the goats around the corner 
and get all the milk we wanted for nothing. They 
caught on to this in Spezia, though, and our ship had 
a bad name there. So, one time when we were in 
this port, we were refused shore leave, and they put 
a gendarme at the gangway. I tried to get past him, 
but he drove me back with his rifle. This made me 



8 Gunner Depew 

pretty sore, so when we were leaving, I shoved him 
in the neck with a long board from off the after deck. 
They tried to arrest me then, but the skipper told 
me to go forward and get my gear going and they 
wouldn't know who had done it. I hid in this way 
until we were clear of the port, but they cabled ahead 
of us and the authorities tried to take me off at 
Gibraltar. Our skipper saved me somehow, though 
I do not know exactly how. This is just a sample of 
the scrapes sailors get into. 

The various navies differ in many ways, but most 
of the differences would not be noticed by anyone 
but a sailor. Every sailor has a great deal of respect 
for the Swedes and Norwegians and Danes ; they are 
born sailors and are very daring, but, of course, their 
navies are small. The Germans were always known 
as clean sailors ; that is, as in our navy and the British, 
their vessels were ship-shape all the time, and were 
run as sweet as a clock. Some of the navies of 
Southern Europe are not so notable in this respect. 
The British and German sailors are strong on tradi- 
tion, and are considered superstitious. A man gets 
his ratings with them more for age and experience, 
while in our navy and in that of France skill counts 
for more than time in service. 

There is no use comparing the various navies as 
to which is best ; some are better at one thing and 
some at another. The British navy, of course, is the 
largest, and nobody will deny that at most things 



In the American Navy 9 

they are topnotch — least of all themselves ; they 
admit it. But there is one place where the navy of 
the United States has it all over every other navy on 
the seven seas, and that is gunnery. The American 
navy has the best gunners in the world. And do 
not let anybody tell you different. 



CHAPTER II 

THE WAR BREAKS 

After serving four years and three months in the 
United States Navy, I received an honourable dis- 
charge on April 14, 1914. I held the rank of chief 
petty officer, first-class gunner. It is not uncommon 
for garbies to go easy for a while between enlistments 
— ^they like a vacation as much as anyone — and it was 
my intention to loaf for a few months before joining 
the navy again. 

After the war started, of course, I had heard more 
or less about the German atrocities in Belgium, and 
while I was greatly interested, I was doubtful at 
first as to the truth of the reports, for I knew how 
news gets changed in passing from mouth to mouth, 
and I never was much of one to believe things until 
I saw them, anyway. Another thing that caused me 
to be interested in the war was the fact that my 
mother was born in Alsace. Her maiden name, 
Diervieux, is well known in Alsace. I had often 
visited my grandmother in St. Nazaire and knew the 
country. So with France at war, it was not strange 
that I should be even more interested than many 
other garbies. 



The War Breaks ii 

As I have said, I did not take much stock in the 
first reports of the Hun's exhibition of kultur, 
because Fritz is known as a clean sailor, and I felt 
certain that no real sailor would ever get mixed up 
in such dirty work as they said there was in Belgium. 
I supposed, too, that the soldiers were like the 
sailors. But I found out I was wrong about both. 

One thing that opened my eyes a bit was the 
trouble my mother had in getting out of Hanover, 
where she was when the war started, and returning 
to France. She always wore a little American flag, 
and this both saved and endangered her. Without 
it, the Gemians would have interned her as a French- 
woman and, with it, she was sneered at and insulted 
time and again before she finally managed to get 
over the border. She died about two months after 
she reached St. Nazaire. 

Moreover, I heard the fate of my older brother, 
who had made his home in France with my grand- 
mother. He had gone to the front at the outbreak 
of the war with the infantry from St. Nazaire and 
had been killed two or three weeks afterwards. This 
made it a sort of personal matter. 

But what put the finishing touches to me were 
the stories a wounded Canadian lieutenant told me 
some months later in New York. He had been 
there and he knew. You could not help believing 
him ; you can always tell when a man has been there 
and knows. 



12 Gunner Depew 

There was not much doing around New York, 
so I made up my mind all of a sudden to go over 
and get some excitement for myself. Believe me, I 
got enough business before I was through. Most 
of the really important things I have done have hap- 
pened Hke that : I did them on the jump, you might 
say. Many other Americans wanted a look, too ; 
there were five thousand Americans in the Canadian 
Army at one time they say. 

I would not claim that I went to Europe to save 
democracy, or anything like that. I never did like 
Germans, and I never met a Frenchman who was 
not kind to me, and what I heard about the way the 
Huns treated the Belgians made me sick. I used 
to get out of bed to go to an all-night picture show, 
I thought about it so much. But there was not much 
excitement around New York, and I inferred that 
the United States would not get into it for a while, 
anyway, so I just wanted to go over and see what it 
was like. That is why lots of us went, I think. 

There were five of us who went to Boston to ship 
for the other side : Sam Murray, Ed Brown, Tim 
Flynn, Mitchell and myself. Murray was an ex- 
garby — two hitches (enlistments), gun-pointer rating, 
about thirty-five years old. Brown was a Pennsyl- 
vania man about twenty-six years old, who had 
served two enlistments in the United States Army 
and had quit with the rank of sergeant. Flynn and 
Mitchell were both ex-navy men. Mitchell was a 



The War Breaks 13 

noted boxer. Of the five of us, I am the only one 
who went in, got through and came out. Flynn and 
Mitchell did not go in ; Murray and Brown never 
came back. 

The five of us shipped on the steamship Virginian 
of the American-Hawaiian Line, under American 
flag and registry, but chartered by the French 
Government. I signed on as water-tender — an 
engine-room job — but the others were on deck — that 
is, seamen. 

We left Boston for St. Nazaire with a cargo of 
ammunition, bully beef, etc., and made the first trip 
without anything of interest happening, except that, 
while we were in the war zone, our boatswain was 
rigging the life-boats, when a line running between 
the davits parted and let him through into the sea. 
We were making about twelve knots at the time, 
but there was a strong current against us and a good 
sea running, and the boatswain shot past us like an 
arrow. We put about at once, but it took us three- 
quarters of an hour to get back to him, and more than 
that before we had a boat over the side and him into 
it. When we dragged him in, he did not have a 
stitch of clothing on him. He had undressed him- 
self completely while he was in the water and kept 
himself up at the same time. Which I thought was 
doing pretty well, as there was a fairly high sea 
running. 

Then, too, in my mess— the oilers' and water- 



14 Gunner Depew 

tenders' — the grub got pretty bad. One day they 
brought us a big mess-kid or tub full of what was 
supposed to be stew. It was the rottenest kind of 
garbage, really, and we made up our minds not to 
put up with it. In the navy we always complain If 
we have any real reason for a grievance, and so, when 
the other members of the mess showed they were not 
anxious to go to the front, it was up to me to make^ 
a bother about it and see if we could not get better 
food. So I took the tub and went up to the chart 
house to show it to the Old Man. I knocked at the 
door several times, but he did not answer, so I put 
the tub down on the deck right in front of the door 
and went away. A few minutes later he came out — 
right into the stew. His foot slipped and he lay 
down in the middle of it. His uniform and his 
dignity sustained severe injuries, as they say. Also, 
some more of him ! Did he find out who did it ? 
Well, I am here to-day. That's your answer. 

As we were mooring to the dock at St. Nazaire, 
I saw a German prisoner sitting on a pile of lumber. 
I thought probably he would be hungry, so I went 
down into the oilers' mess and got two slices of bread 
with a thick piece of beef-steak between them and 
handed it to Fritz. He would not take it. At first 
I thought he was afraid to, but by using several 
languages and signs, he managed to make me under- 
stand that he was not hungry — had too much to eat, 
in fact. 



The War Breaks 15 

I used to think of this fellow occasionally when 
I was in a German prison camp, and a piece of 
mouldy bread the size of a safety-match box was the 
generous portion of food they forced on me, with 
true German hospitality, once every forty-eight 
hours. I would not exactly have refused a beef- 
steak sandwich, I am afraid. But then I was not a 
heaven-born German. I was only a common 
American garby. He was full of kultur and grub. 
I was not full of anything. 

There was a large prison camp at St. Nazaire, and 
at one time or another I saw all of it. Before the 
war it had been used as a barracks by the French 
army and consisted of well-made, comfortable two- 
storey stone buildings, floored with concrete, with 
auxiliary barracks of logs. The German prisoners 
occupied the stone buildings, while the French 
guards were quartered in the log houses. Inside, the 
houses were divided into long rooms with white- 
washed walls. There were two-decked wooden 
platforms in the rooms and iron cots, exactly the 
same as the French soldiers used. There were a 
gymnasium for the prisoners, a canteen where they 
might buy most of the things you could buy any- 
where else in the country, and a studio for the 
painters among the prisoners. Officers were separ- 
ated from privates— which was a good thing for the 
privates— and were kept in houses surrounded by 
stockades. Officers and privates received identical 



i6 Gunner Depew 

treatment, however, and all were given exactly the 
same rations and equipment as the regular French 
army before it went to the front. Their food con- 
sisted of bread, soup, and " vino," as wine is called 
almost everywhere in the world. In the morning 
they received half a loaf of Vienna bread and coffee. 
At noon they each had a large dixie or can of thick 
soup, and at three in the afternoon more bread and 
a bottle of vino. The soup was more like a stew — 
very thick with meat and vegetables. At one of the 
officers' barracks there was a cook who had been chef 
in the largest hotel in Paris before the war. 

All the prisoners were well clothed. Once a week, 
socks, underwear, soap, towels and blankets were 
issued to them, and every week the barracks and 
equipment were fumigated. They were given the 
best of medical attention. 

Besides all this, they were allowed to work at their 
trades, if they had any. All the carpenters, cobblers, 
tailors and painters were kept busy, and some of 
them picked up more change there than they ever 
did in Germany, they told me. The musicians 
formed bands, and played almost every night at 
restaurants and theatres in the town. Those who 
had no trade were allowed to work on the roads, 
parks, docks, and at private residences. 

Talk about Dear Old Jail ! You could not have 
driven the average prisoner away from there with a 
14-inch gun. I used to think about them in Bran- 



The War Breaks 17 

denburg, when our boys were rushing the sentries 
in the hope of being bayoneted out of their misery. 

One day I met an officer prisoner, who, Hke many 
of his kind, had not been grateful for the kindly 
treatment the French gave him, and had therefore 
been confined in a stockade. The cure for his stub- 
bornness had evidently worked, for he pointed over 
to a hill, where there was the biggest pile of logs I 
ever saw, and said : " I would saw up all those logs 
if I could go over to that hill ; it must be great to 
look down from the top of it. I've been staring at a 
fence for what seems years." 

While our cargo was being unloaded I spent most 
of my time with my grandmother. I had heard still 
more about the cruelty of the Huns, and made up 
my mind to get into the service. Murray and Brown 
had already enlisted in the Foreign Legion, Brown 
being assigned to the infantry and Murray to the 
French man-of-war Cassard. But when I spoke of 
my intention, my grandmother cried so much that I 
promised her I would not enlist— that time, anyway 
— and made the return voyage on the Virginian. 
We were no sooner loaded in Boston than back to 
St. Nazaire we went. 



CHAPTER III 

IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

This time I was determined to enlist. So, when 
we landed at St. Nazaire, I drew my pay from the 
Virginian, and after spending a week with my 
grandmother, I went out and asked the first gen- 
darme I met where the enlistment station was. I 
had to argue with him some time before he would 
even direct me to it. Of course, I had no passport, 
and this made Kim suspicious of me, but it did not 
seem at all like the welcome the Canadian lieutenant 
had assured me I would receive. However, I finally 
got the gendarme to take me to the enlistment 
station by showing him that if there was any objec- 
tion coming, the recruiting officers were the ones to 
make it. I could have found the way by myself, I 
suppose, but once I had started arguing with the 
gendarme I hated to give in. 

The officer in charge of the station was no 
warmer in his welcome than the gendarme, and this 
surprised me, because Murray and Brown had no 
trouble at all in joining. The French, of course, 
often speak of the Foreign Legion as " the con- 
victs," because so many of the legionaries are 



In the Foreign Legion 19 

wanted by the police of their respective countries, 
not necessarily for criminal acts, though a criminal 
record never had been a bar to service with the 
Legion, and I did not see w^hy it should be now — 
if they suspected me of having one. I had heard 
there were not a few Germans in the Legion — later 
I became acquainted with some — and, believe me, 
no Alsatian ever fought harder against the Huns 
than those former Deutschlanders did. It occurred 
to me then that if they thought I was a German, 
because I had no passport, I might have to prove I 
had been in trouble with the Kaiser's crew before 
they would accept me. I do not know what the real 
difficulty was, but I solved the problem by showing 
them my discharge papers from the American Navy. 
Even then, they were suspicious because they thought 
I was too young to have been a C.P.O. When they 
challenged me on this point, I said I would prove it 
to them by taking an examination. 

They examined me very carefully, in English, 
although I know enough French to pass in a subject 
like gunnery. But foreign officers are very proud of 
their knowledge of English — and most of them can 
speak it — and I think this one wanted to show off, as 
you might say. Anyway, I passed my examination 
without any trouble, was accepted for service in the 
Foreign Legion, and received my commission as 
gunner, dated Friday, January 1, 1915. 

There is no use in my describing the Foreign 



20 Gunner Depew 

Legion. It is one of the most famous fighting organi- 
sations in the world, and has made a wonderful 
record during the war. When I joined the Legion, 
it numbered about 60,000 men. The legionaries 
were a fine body of men, and wonderful fighters. 
But the whole civilised world is now fighting the 
Huns, and Americans do not have to enlist with the 
French or the Limeys any longer. 

While I was in the Legion I heard of one chap 
who wrote long and exciting yarns of his life in the 
trenches — raids, bombardments, etc. — and all the 
while he was in a training camp far back from the 
lines out of sound of the guns. Some of his letters 
got past the censor somehow, but others were held 
up, and, believe me, this lad had it laid on to him 
thick and fast. He is dead now, or missing, I never 
heard exactly which, and anyway, he was just a kid, 
so nobody holds it against him. 

But one thing about the Legion, that I find many 
people do not know, is that the legionaries are used 
for either land or sea service. They are sent wher- 
ever they can be used. I do not know whether this 
was the case before the present war — I think not — 
but in my time, many of the men were put on ships. 
Most people, however, have the idea that they are 
only used in the infantry. 

With my commission as gunner, I received orders 
to go to Brest and join the dreadnought Cassard. 
This assignment tickled me, for my pal Murray was 



In the Foreign Legion 21 

aboard, and I had expected trouble in transferring to 
his ship in case I was assigned elsewhere. We had 
arranged to stick together, as long as we could. We 
did, too. 

Murray was as glad as I was when I came aboard, 
and he told me he had heard that Brown, our other 
pal, had been made a sergeant in another regiment 
of the Legion. 

We were both surprised at some of the differences 
between the French navy and ours, but after we got 
used to them, we thought many of their customs im- 
provements upon ours. But we could not get used to 
them at first. For instance, on an American ship, 
when you are sound askep in a nice warm hammock 
and it is time to relieve the watch on deck, as like as 
not you will be awakened gently by a burly garby 
armed with a fairy wand about the size of a bed slat, 
whereas in French ships, when they call the watch, 
you would think you were in a swell hotel and had left 
word at the desk. It was hard to turn out at first 
without the aid of a club, and harder still to break 
ourselves of the habit of calling our relief in the gay 
and festive American manner ; but, as I say, we got 
to like it after a while. 

Then, too, they do not play any pranks in the 
French navy, and this surprised us. We had expected 
to go through the mill just as we did when we joined 
the American service, but nobody slung a hand at us. 
On the contrary, every garby aboard was kind and 



22 Gunner Depew 

decent and extremely curious, and the fact that we 
were from the States counted a lot with them. They 
used to brag about it to the crews of other ships that 
were not so honoured. 

But this kindness we might have expected. It 
is just like Frenchmen in any walk of life. With 
hardly an exception, I have never met one of this 
nationality who was not anxious to help you in every 
way he could ; extremely generous, though not reck- 
less with small change, and almost always cheery and 
with a smile in any weather. A fellow asked me once 
why it was that almost the whole world loves the 
French, and I told him it was because the French love 
almost the whole world and show it. And I think 
that is the reason, too. 

About the only way you can describe the poilus, 
on land or sea, is that they are gentle. That is, you 
always think that word when you see one and talk 
to him — unless you happen to see him within bayonet 
distance of Fritz. 

The French sailors sleep between decks in bunks, 
instead of hammocks, and as I had not slept in a bunk 
since my South erndown days, it was pretty hard on 
me. So I got hold of some heaving line, which is 
one-quarter inch rope, and rigged up a hammock. In 
my spare time I taught the others how to make them, 
and pretty soon everybody was doing it. By the 
way, the American rag-time about "Everybody's 
Doing It " had just reached the French navy, and 



In the Foreign Legion 23 

everybody was overdoing it, each with a different 
version. 

When I taught the sailors to make hammocks, I 
expected, of course, that they would use them as we 
did — that is, sleep in them. They were greatly 
pleased at first, but after they had tried the stunt of 
getting in and staying in, it was another story. A 
hammock is like some other things — it works while 
you sleep — and if you are not up to it, you spend most 
of your sleeping time hitting the floor. Our gun 
captain thought I had given him a trick hammock, 
but I did not need to ; every hammock is a trick 
hammock. 

They would not believe me, however, and they 
couldn't say enough things about me, and called me 
all the names in the French language, even " camel," 
which is supposed to be a very rough word and a ter- 
rible insult. I passed them a little language, too, 
in American, only I did not call them camels. No 
American garby would call a mate that! 

Also, I taught them the way we make mats out of 
rope, to use while sleeping on the steel gratings near 
the entrance to stoke holes. In cold weather this part 
of the ship is more comfortable than the ordinary 
sleeping quarters, but without a mat it gets too hot. 

American soldiers and sailors get the best food 
in the world, but while the French navy grub was 
not fancy, it was clean and hearty, as they say down 
East. For breakfast we had bread and coffee and 



24 Gunner Depew 

sardines ; at noon a boiled dinner, mostly beans, 
which were old friends of mine, and of the well- 
named navy variety ; at four in the afternoon, a pint 
of vino, and at six, a supper of soup, coffee, bread and 
beans. 

Although the French " Seventy-five " is the best 
gun in the world, their naval guns are not as good as 
ours, and their gunners are mostly older men. But 
they will give a youngster a gun rating if he shows 
the stuff. 

Shortly after I went aboard the Cassard, we re- 
ceived instructions to proceed to Spezia, the large 
Italian naval base. The voyage was without incident, 
but when we dropped anchor in Spezia, the port 
officials quarantined us for fourteen days on account 
of smallpox. During this period our food was pretty 
bad; in fact, the meat became rotten. This could 
hardly have happened on an American ship, because 
fhey are provisioned with canned stuff and preserved 
meats, but the French ships, like the Italian, depend 
on live stock, fresh vegetables, etc., which they carry 
on board, and we had expected to get a large supply 
of such stuff at Spezia. Long before the fourteen 
days were up we were out of these things, and had to 
live on anything we could get hold of — mostly hard- 
tack, coffee and cocoa. 

I knew Spezia well, but I did not go about the 
town after the quarantine was lifted, because of the 
adventure I had had with the gendarme on another 



In the Foreign Legion 25 

voyage. I saw a gendarme, whom I took to be my 
friend, at a distance, but I did not haul any closer to 
make sure. I was glad he was still living, but I 
imagined he would not want to get chummy with me, 
so I thought I would not bother him. 

We loaded a cargo of aeroplanes for the Italian 
aviators at the French flying schools, and started back 
to Brest. On the way we had target practice. In 
fact, at most times on the open sea, it was a regular 
part of the routine. 

It was during one of these practices that the 
French officers wanted to find out what the Yankee 
gunner knew about gunnery. At a range of eight 
miles, while the ship was making eight knots an hour, 
with a fourteen-inch gun I scored three d's — that is, 
three direct hits out of five trials. After that there 
was no question about it. As a result, I was awarded 
three bars. These bars, which are strips of red braid, 
are worn on the left sleeve, and signify extra marks- 
manship. I also received two hundred and fifty 
francs, or about fifty dollars in American money, and 
fourteen days' shore leave. 

All this made me venj angry, oh, very much 
wrought up indeed, what do you think? I saw a 
merry life for myself on the French rolling wave if 
they felt that way about gunnery. 

I spent most of my leave with my grandmother 
in St. Nazaire, except for a short trip I made to a 
star-shell factory. This factory was just about like 



26 Gunner Depew 

one I saw later somewhere in America, save in the 
French works all the hands were women. Only the 
guards were men, and they were blesses (wounded). 

When my leave was up and I said good-bye to 
my grandmother, she managed a smile for me, 
though I could see that it was pretty stiff work. And 
without getting soft, or anything like that, I can tell 
you that smile stayed with me and it did me more 
good than you would believe, because it gave me 
something good to think about when I was up against 
the real thing. 

I hope many w^omen will read this book, because 
I have had it in mind for some time to tell all the 
women I could a little thing they can do that will 
help a lot. I am not trying to be fanciful about it, 
and I hope you will take it from me the way I 
mean it. 

When you say good-bye to your son, or your 
husband, or your sweetheart, work up a smile for 
him. What you want to do is to give him something 
he can think about over there, and something he will 
like to think about. There is so much dirt, and 
blood, and hunger, and cold, and all that around him, 
that he has just got to quit thinking about it, or he 
will go crazy. And so, when he can think about 
something nice, he can pretty nearly forget all the 
rest for a while. The nicest things he can think 
about are the things he liked when he was at home. 



In the Foreign Legion 27 

Now, you can take it from me that what your 
boy will like to remember the best of all is your face 
with a smile on it. He has got enough hell on his 
hands without a lot of tears to remember. But don't 
forget that the chances are on his side — that he will 
get back to you ; the figures prove it. That will help 
you a lot. Even so, it will be hard work ; you will 
feel more like crying, and so will he, maybe. But 
smile for him. That smile is your "bit." 

I will back a smile against the weeps in a race to 
Berlin any time. So I am telling you, and I can- 
not make it strong enough — send him away with a 
smile. 



CHAPTER IV 

IN THE FIRING LINE 

When I reported on the Cassard after my fourteen 
days' leave, I was detailed with a detachment of the 
Legion to go to the Flanders front. I changed into 
tTie regular uniform of the Legion, which is about 
like that of the infantry, with the regimental badge 
— a seven-flamed grenade. 

We travelled from Brest by rail, in third-class 
cars, passing through Le Havre and St. Pol, and 
finally arriving at Bergues. From Bergues we made 
the trip to Dixmude by truck — a distance of about 
twenty miles. We carried no rations with us, but at 
certain places along the line the train stopped, and 
we got out to eat our meals. At every railway station 
they have booths or counters, and French girls work 
day and night feeding the poilus. It was a wonderful 
sight to see these girls, and it made you feel good to 
think you were going to fight for them. 

It was not only what they did, but the way they 
did it, and it is at things like this that the French 
beat the world. They could tell just what kind of 
treatment each poilu needed, and they saw to it that 
he got it. They took special pains with the men of 

28 



In the Firing Line 29 

the Legion, because, as they say, we are " strangers," 
and that means, " the best we have is yours " to the 
French. These French women, young and old, could 
be a mother and a sweetheart and a sister all at the 
same time to any hairy old ex-convict in the Legion, 
and do it in a way that made him feel like a little 
boy at the time and a rich church member after- 
wards. The only thing we did not like about the trip 
was that there were not enough stations along that 
line. This is a tip the French engineers will not 
take, I am afraid. 

And the legionaries were French enough in their 
feehngs so that they took it in the right way, too. 
I never saw one of our men get gay with a French 
girl, and if they did not, I know the regular French 
troops did not either. As soldiers are apt to be pretty 
raw sometimes, that is saying a lot for the French 
women. 

There is another thing about the French women 
that I have noticed, and that is this. There are pretty 
girls in every country under the sun, but the plain 
girls in France are prettier than the plain ones in 
other countries. They might not show it in photo- 
graphs, but in action there is something about them 
that you cannot explain. I have never seen an ugly 
French girl who was not easy to look at. 

Most of the French people are just a little bit 
afraid of the men of the Legion. They think that a 
man must be a very desperate thug before he would 



30 Gunner Depew 

be willing to serve where the Legion does in time of 
peace and for the small pay they get. Also, after 
the Germans took Alsace-Lorraine in 1870, so many 
Alsatians joined the Legion — because otherwise they 
would have to serve with the Germans — that the 
French got into the habit of calling the legionaries 
Germans or Prussians, or something like that, and 
many of the simple-minded French people got to 
think they really were all Germans in the Legion. 

So, when a section of the Legion came through 
a certain little town a short time before we did, the 
inhabitants were much frightened. They had never 
seen legionaries before, but they had heard of them. 

"It is the Germans, the desperate men of the 
Legion," they said. " What will become of the 
town?" 

The men got out of the trains and wandered about 
the little town, and some of them wanted to buy 
tobacco, or vino, or what not. But every shop was 
closed and barricaded. Every person they came to 
ran away as fast as he or she could, and nobody would 
have a thing to do with them. 

This made the men pretty mad, naturally. A 
great many soldiers or sailors would have broken up 
the whole place, but the men of the Legion knew 
discipline, for they really are proud of the regiment 
and do not want to disgrace it. So though these 
men were angry and insulted, they behaved 
themselves. 



In the Firing Line 31 

They really did need tobacco and a few other 
things, so they took the shutters out of a shop window 
and climbed in and helped themselves. But they 
left the money for it, and because they did not have 
the exact change, they left more than the right price. 
Then they got aboard their train and pulled away. 

But the people of the place kept talking about 
the affair until, according to them, the Legion had 
sacked the town and looted every house in it. I 
guess they got to believing it themselves, because by 
the time we arrived, to say that they steered clear of 
us for life was putting it mildly. 

They did not have the shops closed this time, and 
they were not hiding, but they would not have any- 
thing to do with us. They would sell us what we 
wanted to buy, but that was all, and not a single 
cheer-oh when some of us wanted to buy vino for 
the crowd. 

We were used to this kind of thing — at least the 
old legionaries were — because trippers like the boys 
of the Legion never do get very chummy with the 
home guards. But we wanted the Legion to stand 
well with the folk in this town, and we were disap- 
pointed when the merry villagers froze up the way 
they did. 

The worst of it was we had to stop there for three 
hours. We walked up and down the square as if we 
felt at home and just the correct thing — like wearing 
a yachting suit in the mountains ! 



32 Gunner Depew 

We finally got to Dixmiide, after having spent 
about eighteen hours on the way. On our arrival, 
one company was sent to the reserve trenches, and my 
company went to the front-line trench. We were 
not placed in training camps, because most of us had 
been under fire before. I never had, but that was 
not supposed to make any difference. They say if 
you can stand the Legion, you can stand anything. 
But I have seen worse than that. 

Before we entered the communication trench, we 
were drawn up alongside of a cross-road for a rest, 
and to receive certain accoutrements. Pretty soon 
we saw a bunch of Boches coming along the road, 
without their guns, a few of them being slightly 
wounded. Some looked scared and others happy, but 
they all seemed tired. Then we heard some singing, 
and pretty soon we could see an Irish corporal step- 
ping along behind the Huns, with his rifle slung over 
his back, and every now and then he would shuffle 
a bit and then sing some more. He had a grin on 
him that pushed his ears back, as if he enjoyed his 
job. 

After we were rested, rifles, shrapnel helmets and 
belts were issued, and then we started down the 
communication trench. These trenches are entrances 
to the fighting trenches, and run at varying angles 
and varying distances apart. They are seldom wide 
enough to hold more than one man, so you have to 
march single file in them. They wind in and out, 



In the Firing Line 33 

according to the lie of the land, some parts of them 
being more dangerous than others. When you come 
to a dangerous spot, you have to crawl sometimes. 

There are so many cross trenches and bUnd alleys 
that you need a guide for a long time, because with- 
out one you are apt to walk through an embrasure 
in a fire trench and right out into the open, between 
the German front line and your own. Which is 
hardly worth while ! 

If any part of the line is under fire, the guide at 
the head of the line is on the lookout for shells, and 
when he hears one coming, he gives the signal and 
you drop to the ground and wait until it bursts. You 
never get all the time you want, but even so, you 
have plenty of time to think about things while you 
are lying with your face in the mud, waiting to hear 
the sound of the explosion. When you hear it, you 
know you have got at least one more to dodge. If 
you do not hear it— well, most likely you are worrying 
more about tuning your thousand-string harp than 

anything else. 

In the communication trench you have to keep 
your distance from the man ahead of you. This is 
done so that you will have plenty of room to fall 
down in, and because if a shell should find the trench, 
there' would be fewer casualties in an open formation 
than in a close one. The German artillery is keen 
on communication trenches, and whenever they spot 
one, they stay with it a long time. Most of them 



34 Gunner Depew 

are camouflaged along the top and sides, so that 
enemy aviators cannot see anything but the earth or 
bushes when they throw an eye down on our hnes. 

We took over our section of the front hne 
trenches from a French hne regiment that had been 
on the job for twenty-four days. That was the 
longest time I have heard of any troops remaining in 
the firing line. 

Conditions at the front and ways of fighting are 
changing all the time, as each side invents new 
methods of butchering, so when I try to describe the 
Dixmude trenches, you must realise that it may be 
ancient history by now. If they are still using 
trenches there, they probably look entirely different. 

But when I was at Dixmude they were something 
like this : 

Behind the series of front-line trenches are the 
reserve trenches ; in this case, five to seven miles 
away, and still farther back are the billets. These 
may be houses, or barns, or ruined churches — any 
place that can possibly be used for quartering troops 
when off duty. 

Troops were usually in the front-line trenches six 
to eight days, and fourteen to sixteen days in the 
reserve trenches. Then they were sent back to the 
billets for six or eight days. 

We were not allowed to change our clothing in 
the front-line trenches — not even to remove socks, 
unless for inspection. Nor would they let you as 



In the Firing Line 35 

much as unbutton your shirt, unless there was an in- 
spection of identification discs. We wore a disc at 
the wrist and another round the neck. You know 
the gag about the discs, of course : If your ami is 
blown off, they can tell who you are by the neck disc ; 
if your head is blown off, they do not care who you 
are. 

In the reserve trenches, you can make yourself 
more comfortable, but you cannot go to such extreme 
lengths of luxury as changing your clothes entirely. 
That is for billets, where you spend most of your time 
bathing, changing clothes, sleeping and eating. Be- 
lieve me, billets is great stuff : it is like a sort of 
temporary heaven. 

Of course you know what the word " cooties " 
means. Let us hope you will never know what the 
cooties themselves mean. When you get in or near 
the trenches, you take a course in the natural history 
of bugs, lice, rats and every kind of pest that has ever 
been invented. 

It is funny to see some of the newcomers when 
they first discover a cootie on them. Some of them 
cry. If they really knew what it was going to be 
like they would do worse than that, maybe. Then 
they start hunting all over each other, just like 
monkeys. They team up for this purpose, and many 
times it is in this way that a couple of men get to be 
trench partners, and come to be pals for life — which 
may not be a long time at that. 



36 Gunner Depew 

In the front-line trenches it is more comfortable 
to fall asleep on the parapet fire-step than in the dug- 
outs, because the cooties are thicker down below, and 
they simply will not give you a minute's rest. They 
certainly are active little pests. We used to make 
back-scratchers out of certain weapons that had 
flexible handles, but never had time to use them w^ien 
we needed them most. 

We were given bottles of strong liquid which 
smelled like lysol, and were supposed to soak our 
clothes in it. It was thought that the cooties would 
object to the smell and quit work. Well, a cootie 
that could stand our clothes without the liquid on 
them would not be bothered bj^ a little thing like 
this stuff. Also, our clothes got so sour and horrible- 
smelling that they hurt our noses w^orse than the 
cooties. They certainly w'ere game little devils, and 
came right back at us. 

So most of the poilus threw the stuff at Fritz, and 
fought the cooties hand to hand. 

There was plenty of food in the trenches most of 
the time, though once in a w^hile, during a heavy 
bombardment, the fatigue — usually a corporal's 
guard — would get killed in the communication 
trenches, and we would not have time to get out to 
the fatigue and rescue the grub they were bringing. 
Sometimes you could not find either the fatigue or 
the grub when you got to the point where they had 
been hit. 



In the Firing Line 37 

But as I say, we were well fed most of the time, 
and got second and third helpings until we had to 
open our belts. But as the Limeys say: " Blime, 
the chuck was rough." They served a thick soup of 
meat and vegetables in bowls the size of wash basins, 
black coffee, with or without sugar — mostly without ! 
— and plenty of bread. 

Also, we had preserves in tins, just like the 
Limeys. If you send any parcels over, do not put 
any apple and plum jam in them, or the man who 
gets it will let Fritz shoot him. Ask any Limey 
soldier, and he will tell you the same. I never 
thought there was so much jam in the world. No 
Man's Land looked like a city dump. Most of us 
took it, after a while, just to get the bread. Early 
in the war they used the tins to make bombs of, but 
that was before Mills came along with his hand 
grenade. Later they flattened out the tins and lined 
the dugouts with them. 

Each man carried an emergency ration in his bag. 
This consisted of bully beef, biscuits, etc. This 
ration was never used except in a real emergency, 
because no one could tell when it might mean the 
difference between life and death to him. When 
daylight catches a man in a shell-hole, or at a 
hstening post out in No Man's Land, he does not 
dare to crawl back to his trench before nightfall, 
and then is the time that his emergency ration comes 
in handy. Also, the stores failed to reach us some- 



38 Gunner Depew 

times, as I have said, and we had to use the emerg- 
ency rations. 

Occasionally we received raw meat, and fried it in 
our dugouts. We built regular clay ovens in the dug- 
outs, with iron tops for broiling. This, of course, 
was in the front-line trenches only. 

We worked two hours on the fire-step and 
knocked off for four hours, in which time we cooked 
and ate and slept. This routine was kept up night 
and day, seven days a week. Sometimes the pro- 
gramme was changed; for instance, when there was 
to be an attack, or when Fritz tried to come over and 
visit us, but otherwise nothing disturbed our routine 
unless it was a gas attack. 

The ambition of most privates is to become a 
sniper, as the official sharpshooter is called. After 
a private has been in the trenches for six months or a 
year and has shown his marksmanship, he becomes 
the great man he has dreamed about. We had two 
snipers to each company, and because they took more 
chances with their lives than the ordinary privates, 
they were allowed more privileges. When it was at 
all possible, our snipers were allowed dry quarters, 
the best of food, and they did not have to follow the 
usual routine, but came and went as they pleased. 

Our snipers, as a rule, went over the parapet about 
dusk, just before Fritz got his star shells going. 
They would crawl out to shell craters, or tree stumps, 
or holes that they had spotted during the day— in 



In the Firing Line 39 

other words, places where they could see the enemy 
parapets, but could not be seen themselves. Once 
in position, they would make themselves comfortable, 
smear their tin hats with dirt, get a good rest for 
their rifles and snipe every German they saw. They 
wore extra bandoliers of cartridges, since there was 
no telling how many rounds they might fire during 
the night. Sometimes they had direct and visible 
targets, and other times they potted Huns by guess- 
work. Usually they crawled back just before day- 
light, but now and again they were out twenty-four 
hours at a stretch. They took great pride in the 
number of Germans they knocked over, and if our 
men did not get eight or ten, they thought they had 
not done a good night's work. Of course, it was not 
wholesale killing, like machine-gunning, but it was 
very useful, because our snipers were always going 
for the German snipers, and when they got Sniper 
Fritz, they saved just so many of our lives. 

The Limeys have a great little expression that 
means a lot : " Carry on." They say it is a Cockney 
expression. When a captain falls in action, his words 
are not a message to the girl he left behind him, or 
any sentiment about his grey-haired mother, but 
simply " Carry on. Lieutenant Whosis." If the 
lieutenant gets hit, it is " Carry on. Sergeant Jacks," 
and so on as far as it goes. So the words used to 
mean, " Take over the command, and do the job 
right." But now they mean not only that, but 



40 Gunner Depew 

"Keep up your courage, and go to it." One man 
will say it to another, sometimes, when he thinks the 
first man is getting down-hearted ; but more often, if 
he is a Limey, he will start kidding him. 

Our men, of course, did not say " Carry on," and 
in fact, they did not have any expression in French 
that meant exactly the same thing. But they used to 
cheer each other on all right, and they passed along 
the command when it was necessary, too. I wonder 
what expression the American troops will use. (You 
notice I do not call them Sammies !) 

I took my turn at listening-post with the rest of 
them, of course. A listening-post is any good posi- 
tion out in No Man's Land, and is always held by 
two men. Their job is to keep a live ear on Fritz, 
and in case they hear anything that sounds very much 
like an attack, one man runs back to his lines, and the 
other stays to hold back the Boches as long as he 
can. You can judge for yourself which is the more 
healthy job. 

Many as were the times that I went on listening- 
post duty, I never did get to feeling homelike there, 
exactly. You have to lie very still, of course, as Fritz 
is listening, too, and a move may mean a bullet in the 
ribs. So, lying on the ground with hardly a change 
of position, the whole lower part of my body would 
go to sleep before I had been at the post very long. 
I used to brag a lot about how fast I could run, so I 
had my turn as the runner, which suited me all right. 



In the Firing Line 41 

But every time I got to a listening-post and started 
to think about what I would do if Fritz should come 
over, and wondered how good a runner he was, I 
took a long breath and said, " Feet, do your duty." 
And I was strong on duty. 

After I had done my stunt in the front-line and 
reserve trenches I went back with my company to 
billets, but had only been there for a day or two when 
I was detached and detailed to the artillery position 
to the right of us, where both the British and French 
had mounted naval guns. Guns of all calibres were 
there, both naval and field pieces, and I got a good 
look at the famous "Seventy-fives," which are the 
best guns in the world, in my estimation, and the one 
thing that saved Verdun. 

The " 75's " fired thirty shots a minute, where 
the best the German guns could do was six. 
The American 3-inch field-piece lets go six times a 
minute, too. The French Government owns the 
secret of the mechanism that made this rapid fire 
possible. When the first '* 75's " began to roar, 
the Germans knew the French had found a new 
weapon, so they were very anxious to get one of the 
guns and learn the secret^ 

Shortly afterwards they captured eight guns by a 
mass attack in which, the Allies claimed, 4,000 Ger- 
man troops were killed. The Boches studied the 
guns, and tried to turn out pieces like them at the 
Krupp factory. But somehow they could not get it. 



42 Gunner Depew 

Their imitation *' 75's " would only fire five shots 
very rapidly, and then "cough" — puff, puff, puff, 
with nothing coming out. The destructive power of 
the " 75's " is enormous. These guns have saved 
the lives of thousands of poilus and Tommies, and it 
is largely due to them that the French are now able 
to beat Fritz at his own game and give back shell for 
shell — and then send over some more on their own 
account. 



CHAPTER V 

WITH THE "75'S " 

My pal Brown, of whom I spoke before, had been 
put in the infantry when he enhsted in the Le|ion, 
because he had served in the United States infantry. 
He soon became a sergeant, which had been his rat- 
ing in the American service. I never saw him in the 
trenches, because our outfits were nowhere near each 
other, but whenever we were in billets at the same 
time we were together as much as possible. 

Brown was a funny card, and I never saw anyone 
else much like him. A big, tall, red-headed fellow, 
never saying much and slow in everything he did or 
said — you w^ould never think he amounted to much 
or was worth his salt. The boys used to call him 
"Ginger" Brown, both on account of his red hair 
and his slow movements. But he would pull a sur- 
prise on you every now and then, like this one that he 
fooled me with. 

One morning about dawn we started out for a 
walk through what used to be Dixmude — piles of 
stone and brick and mortar. There were no 
" civvies " to be seen ; only mules and horses bring- 
ing up casks of water, bags of beans, chloride of lime, 

43 



44 Gunner Depew 

barbed wire, ammunition, etc. It was a good thing 
we were not superstitious. At that, the shadows 
along the walls made me feel shaky sometimes. 

Finally Brown said : " Come on down; let's see 
the ' 75's.' " At this time I had not seen a " 75," 
except on a train going to the front, so I took him 
up right away, but was surprised that he should 
know where they were. 

After going half way round Dixmude, Brown 
said, " Here we are," and started right into what was 
left of a big house. I kept wondering how he could 
know so much about it, but followed him. Inside 
the house was a passage-way under the ruins. It was 
about seven feet wide and fifty feet long, I should 
judge. 

At the other end was the great old "75," poking 
its nose out of a hole in the wall. The gun captain 
and the crew were sitting about waiting the word for 
action, and they seemed to know Brown well. I was 
surprised at that, but still more so when he told me 
I could examine the gun if I wanted to, just as if 
he owned it. 

So I sat in the seat and trained the cross wires 
on an object, opened and closed the breech, and 
examined the recoil. 

Then Brown said : '' Well, Chink, you will see 
some real gunnery now," and they passed the word 
and took stations. My eyes bulged out when I saw 
Brown take his station with them ! 



With the " 75's " 45 

" Silence ! " is about the first command a gun crew 
gets when it is going into action, but I forgot all 
about it, and shouted out and asked Brown how the 
hell he got to be a gunner. But he only grinned and 
looked serious, as usual. Then I came to, and ex- 
pected to get a reprimand from the officer, but he 
only grinned and so did the crew. It seems they had 
it all planned to spring on me, and they expected I 
would be surprised. 

So we put cotton in our ears, and the captain 
called the observation tower a short distance away, 
and they gave him the range. Then the captain 
called " 4128 metres " to Brown. They placed the 
nose of a shell in a fuse adjuster, and turned the 
handle until it reached scale 4128. This set the fuse 
to explode at the range given. Then they slammed 
the shell into the breecih, locked it shut, and Brown 
sent his best to Fritz. 

The barrel slipped back, threw out the shell case 
at our feet, and returned over a cushion of grease. 
Thei]!, we received the results by telephone from the 
observation tower. After he had fired twelve shots, 
the captain said to Brown : " You should never waste 
yourself in infantry, son." And old Brown just 
stood there and grinned. 

That was Brown every time. He knew about 
more things than you could think of. He had read 
about gunnery and fooled around at Dixmude until 
they let him play with the '* 75's," and finally, here 



46 Gunner Depew 

he was, giving his kindest to Fritz with the rest of 
them. 

I never saw a battery better concealed than this 
one. Upon the ground you couldn't see the muzzle 
twenty yards away — and that was all there was to see 
at any distance. There was a ruined garden just out- 
side the gun quarters, and while the gunners were 
busy picking apples, there would be a hiss and an 
explosion, and over would go some of the trees or 
maybe a man or two, but never a shell struck nearer 
the guns than that. The poilus used to thank Fritz 
for helping them pick the apples, because the explo- 
sions would bring them down in great style. Shells 
from our heavy artillery passed just over the garden, 
too, making an awful racket. But they were not in 
it with the *' 75's." 

They gave me a little practice with a " 75 " under 
the direction of expert French gunners before I went 
to my 14-inch naval gun, and, believe me, it was a fine 
piece. Just picture to yourself a little beauty that 
can send a 38-pound shell every two seconds for five 
miles and more, if you want it to, and land on Fritz's 
vest button every time. There is nothing I like better 
than a gun, anyway, and I have never since been 
entirely satisfied with anything less than a "75." 

As you probably know, the opposing artillery in 
this war is so widely separated that the gunners never 
see their targets, unless these happen to be buildings 
— and even then it is rare. So, since an artillery 



With the " 75's " 47 

officer never sees the enemy artillery or infantry, he 
must depend on others to give him the range and 
direction. 

For this purpose there are balloons and aeroplanes 
attached to each artillery unit. The aeroplanes are 
equipped with wireless, but also signal by smoke and 
direction of flight, while the balloons use telephones. 
The observers have maps, and powerful glasses, and 
cameras. Their maps are marked off in zones to cor- 
respond with the maps used by the artillery officers. 

The observations are signalled to a receiving 
station on the ground, and are then telephoned to 
the batteries. All our troops were equipped with 
telephone signal corps detachments, and this was a 
very important arm of the service. The enemy posi- 
tion is shelled before an attack, either by barrage 
or otherwise, and communication between the waves 
of attack and the artillery is absolutely necessary. 
Bombardments are directed towards certain parts of 
the enemy position almost as accurately as you would 
use a searchlight. The field telephones are very light, 
and are portable to the last degree. They can be 
rigged up or knocked down in a very short time. The 
wire is wound on drums or reels, and you would be 
surprised to see how quickly our corps established 
communication between a newly-won trench and 
headquarters, for instance. They were asking for our 
casualties almost before we had finished having them. 
Artillery fire was directed by men whose duty it 



48 Gunner Depew 

was to work out the range from the information sent 
them by the observers in the air. Two men were 
stationed at the switchboard ; one man to receive the 
message and the other to operate the board. As soon 
as the range was plotted out, it was telephoned to 
the gunners and they did the rest. 

The naval guns at Dixmude were mounted on 
flat cars, and these were drawn to and fro on the 
track by little Belgian engines. 

After I had been at my gun for several days I 
was ordered back to my regiment, which was again 
in the front-line trenches. My course was past both 
the British and French lines, but quite a distance 
behind the front lines. 

Everywhere ambulances and wagons were going 
backwards and forwards. I met one French am- 
bulance that was typical of all the rest. It was a 
long wagon full of poilus from a field hospital near 
the firing-line, and was driven by a man whose left 
arm was bandaged to the shoulder. Two poilus, who 
sat in the rear, on guard, had each been wounded in 
the leg, and one had had a big strip of his scalp torn 
off. There was not a sound man in the company. 
You can imagine what their cargo was like if the 
convoy was as used up as these chaps. But all who 
could were singing and talking and full of pep. That 
is the French for you ; they used no more men than 
they could possibly spare to take care of the wounded, 
but they were all cheerful about it — always. 



With the " 75's " 49 

Just after I passed this ambulance, the Germans 
began shelling a section of the road too near me to 
be comfortable, so I retired to a shell crater about 
twenty yards off the road, to the rear. A shrapnel 
shell exploded pretty near me just as I jumped into 
this hole — I did not look round to see how close it was 
— and I remember now how an old minstrel joke I 
had heard on board ship came to my mind at the 
time, something about a fellow feeling so small he 
climbed into a hole and pulled it after him, and I 
wished I might do the same. I flattened myself as 
close against the wall of the crater as I could, and 
then I noticed that somebody had made a dug- 
out in the other wall of the crater, and I started 
for it. 

The shells were exploding so fast by that time 
that you could not listen for each explosion separ- 
• ately, and just as I jumped into the dugout a regular 
hail of shrapnel fell on the spot I had just passed. 
It was pretty dark in the dugout, and the first move I 
made I bumped into somebody else, and he let out a 
yell that you could have heard for a mile. It was a 
Tommy who had been wounded in the hand, and 
between curses he told me I had sat right on his 
woimd when I moved. I asked him why he did not 
yell sooner, but he only swore some more. He surely 
was a great cusser. After a while I asked him if 
his hand still hurt him, and he said: "Hand, hell! 
It's my ruddy pipe I've been swearing about, you 



50 Gunner Depew 

blighter. I lost it when the damned bullet hit me." 
I gave him my pipe, and he seemed perfectly satisfied 
and did not let out another word. 

The bombardment slackened up a bit about this 
time, and I thought I would have a look round. I 
did not get out of the crater entirely, but raised my- 
self out of the dugout until I could see the road I 
had been on. The first thing I saw was a broken- 
down wagon that had just been hit — in fact, it was 
toppling over when my eye caught it. The driver 
jumped from his seat, and while he was in the air his 
head was torn completely from his shoidders by an- 
other shell, I do not know of what kind. This was 
enough for me, so back I went to the dugout. 

How the Germans did it I do not know ; there 
had not been a balloon or aeroplane in the sky for 
some time. 

After a while the bombardment moved away to 
the east, from which direction I had come, and I 
knew our batteries were getting it. The Tommy and 
I came out of the dugout. As I started climbing up 
the muddy sides I saw a man standing at the edge 
of it, and could tell by his puttees that he was a 
Limey. I was having a hard job of it, so without 
looking up I hailed him. 

" That was sure some shelling, wasn't it? " I 
said. " There's a lad down here with a wounded 
fin ; better give him a hand." 

"What shelling do you mean?" says the legs, 



With the " 75's " 51 

without moving. *' There's been none in this sector 
for some time, I think." 

The Tommy was right at my heel by this time, 
and he let out a string of language. I was surprised, 
too, and still scrambling around in the mud. 

"My God," I says, "what have you been 
drinking? " 

Then the Tommy ejaculated, " Gawd 'elp us ! " 
and I looked up and saw that the legs belonged to a 
Limey officer, a major, I think. And here we had 
been cussing the eyes off of him ! 

But he sized it up rightly and gave us a hand, and 
only laughed when we tried to explain. I got an- 
noyed and told him that all I saw was his legs, and 
that they did not look like an officer's legs, which 
might have made it worse, only he was good-natured 
about it. Then he said that he had been asleep in a 
battalion headquarters dugout, about a hundred 
yards away, and only waked up when part of the roof 
caved in on him. Yet he did not know he had been 
shelled ! 

I went on down the road a stretch, but soon found 
it was easier walking beside it. Also, there were so 
many wrecked horses and wagons to climb over on the 
road — besides dead men. 

After I had passed the area of the bombardment 
and got back on the road, I sat down to rest and 
smoke. A couple of shells had burst so near the 
crater that they had thrown the dirt right into the 



52 Gunner Depew 

dugout, and I was a little dizzy from the shock. 
While I was sitting there a squad of Tommies came 
up with about twice their number of German 
prisoners. The Tommies had been making Fritz do 
the goose step , and they started them at it again when 
they saw me sitting there. It sure is good for a 
laugh any time, this goose step. I guess they call it 
that after the fellow who invented it. 

One thing I had noticed about a Fritz was the way 
his coat flared out at the bottom, so I took this chance 
to find out about it, while they halted for a rest just 
a little farther down the road. I found that they 
carried their emergency kits in their coats. These 
kits contained canned meat, tobacco, needles, thread 
and plaster — all this in addition to their regular pack. 

Then I went down the road some more, but had 
to stop pretty soon to let a column of French infantry 
swing on to the road from a field. They were on their 
way to the trenches as reinforcements. After every 
two companies there would be a wagon. Pretty soon 
I saw the uniform of the Legion. Then a company 
of my regiment came up and I wlieeled in with them. 
We were in the rear of the column. Our boys were 
not part of the column that had just passed, but were 
going up for their regular stunt in the front lines, 
while the others had just arrived at that part of the 
front. 

Then for the first time my feet began hurting me. 
Our boots were made of rough cowhide and fitted 



With the " 75's " 53 

very well, but it was a day's labour to carry them on 
your feet. I began to fall behind. I would lag 
twenty or thirty yards behind and then try to catch 
up. But the thousands of men ahead of me kept up 
the steady pace and very few Umped, though they 
had been on the march since 3 a.m. It was then 
about 11 A.M. Those who did limp were carried in 
the wagons. But I had seen very few men besides the 
drivers riding in the wagons, and I wanted to be as 
tough as the next guy, so I kept on. But, believe me, 
I was sure glad when we halted for a rest. 

That is, the reinforcements did ! Our company 
of the Legion had not come so far, and when the 
front of the column had drawn out of the way along 
the road, we kept on fihng, as the saying is. I did not 
care about being tough then and was ready for the 
wagon. 

Only now there were no wagons ! They belonged 
with the other troops. So I had to ease along as 
best I could for what seemed like hours — to my feet — 
until we turned off into another road and halted for 
a rest. I found out later that our officers had gone 
astray and were lost at this time, though, of course, 
they did not tell us so. But I suspected it, for, when 
some stoves or soup kitchens came up, our officers 
stopped them, and made them serve us with the soup 
they had been cooking while they travelled along. 
They would not have done this if we had not been 
lost, because they would either have known they were 



54 Gunner Depew 

close to our destination, or would have brought a 
commissary with them. 

But I did not stop to argue about it. I under- 
stood very clearly that I was hungry, and I think I 
would have enjoyed a bale of hay just as well as the 
soup-kitchen horses did. These soup kitchens, by the 
way, always reminded me of a small-town fire engine, 
and I could never see one without expecting it to 
come tearing along with the horses galloping and a 
fellow hanging on to the stern ringing a gong. I 
dreamed of this once, in a firing-line dugout, and just 
as plain as day I saw the soup kitchen dash past, with 
the fellow ladling out soup as fast as he could go. 

We arrived at our section of the trench about 3 
o'clock that afternoon, and I rejoined my company. 
I was all tired out after this trek, and found myself 
longing for the Cassard and the rolling wave, where 
no Marathons and five-mile stunts were necessary. 
But this was not in store for me — yet. 



CHAPTER VI 

FRITZ DOES A LITTLE " STRAFEING " 

My unit was one of those that saw the Germans place 
women and children in front of them as shields 
against our fire. More than a third of our men, I 
should say, had been pretty tough criminals in their 
own countries. They always traded their pay against 
a handful of cards, or a roll of the bones, Whenever 
they got a chance. They had been in most of the 
dirty parts of the world. This war was not such a 
novelty to them ; just one more jpb in the list. They 
could call God, and the saints, and the human body 
more things than any boss stevedore that ever lived. 

Yet they were religious, in a way. Some of them 
were always reading religious books or saying prayers 
in different fashions, and between them they believed 
in every religion and superstition under the sun, I 
guess. Yet they were the toughest bunch I ever met. 

After they saw the Germans using the Belgian 
women the way they did, almost every man in my 
company took some kind of vow or other, and most 
of them kept their vows, too, I believe. And those 
that were religious got more so, after that. 

Our chaplain had always been very friendly with 

55 



56 Gunner Depew 

the men, and while I think they liked him, they were 
so tough they would never admit it, and some of them 
claimed he was a Jonah, or jinx, or bad luck of some 
kind. But they all told him their vows, as soon as 
they made them, and he was supposed to be a sort of 
referee as to whether they kept them or not. 

The men of the Legion were always singing. 
Whenever they would be on the march, they would 
pipe up, and no group of two or three could get to- 
gether without trying out a barber-shop chord or 
two. As you probably know, American rag-time is 
the rage in France, and they knew a lot of popular 
songs that we have heard in the States. Some- 
times they sang them in French and sometimes in 
English. 

The songs they seemed to like best were usually 
parodies, such as " It's a Long Way to St. Helena." 
They also were fond of one of the many alleged 
Hawaiian songs — they all sound alike to me — about 
Waikiki, or Mauna Loa, or neighbouring ports. 
Then they had songs that they made up themselves, 
one for almost every important battle the Legion ever 
fought in. But the song I liked best was an old song 
of the Legion, one of their many historical songs, 
which was called " Rataplan." Believe me, it was 
great stuff to swing along a road with the whole crew 
roaring " Rrrrrrat-a-pte / " Another tune that I 
liked was the regimental march, " Allons, Giron." 
The men used to sing or hum these songs even in the 



A Little "Strafeing" 57 

trenches, or while we were consolidating an enemy 
position we had taken. 

During my second srtunt in the front lines things 
got pretty bad. The Germans were five to our one, 
and they kept pushing back parts of the line and 
cleaning out others. And the weather was as bad as 
it could be, and the food did not always come regu- 
larly. Now, before they took their vows, every last 
man would have been kicking and growling all the 
time, but as it was, the only time they growled was 
when the Germans piLshed us back. 

Things kept getting worse, and you could see that 
the men talked to the chaplain more, and quite a 
few of them got real chummy with him. 

One morning Fritz started in bright and early to 
begin his "strafe." The lieutenant was walking up 
and down the trench to see that the sentries were 
properly posted and were on the job. A shell whizzed 
over his head and landed just behind the parados, and 
the dirt spouted up as, I imagine, a Yellowstone 
geyser does. 

Another officer came up to the lieutenant — a new 
one who had only joined the company about a week 
before. They had walked about ten yards when 
another shell whizzed over them. They lay to and a 
third one came. There were three in less than five 
minutes, directly over their heads. 

Then a shell landed on the left side of the trench, 
and a poilu yelled that four men had got it. They 



58 Gunner Depew 

were all wounded, and three died later. The lieu- 
tenant went over to them, and just after he passed 
me, a lad got it square not far from me and was 
knocked over to where I was lying. 

The lieutenant came back and helped me .with the 
first-aid roll, and then the Germans began using 
shrapnel. The lieutenant was swearing hard about 
the shrapnel, and the Germans, and everything else. 

Farther to the right a shell had just struck near 
the parados and made a big crater, and across from 
it, against the parapet, was a young chap with a deep 
gash in his head, sitting on the fire-step, and next to 
him a fellow nursing the place where his arm had 
been blown off. Our bread ration lay all about the 
trench, and some of the poilus were fishing it out of 
the mud and water, and wiping the biscuits off on 
their sleeves or eating as fast as they could. Only, 
some of the biscuits had fallen in bloody water, and 
they did not eat these. 

A young fellow, hardly more than a boy, stumbled 
over the parados, and fell into the trench right near 
the lieutenant, and the lieutenant dressed his wounds 
himself. I think he was some relation of the boy. 

The lieutenant asked him how he felt, but the boy 
only asked for water and smiled. But you could see 
he was in great pain. Then the boy said : " Oh, the 
pain is awful. I am going to die." 

" You are all right, old man," the lieutenant 
said. " You will be home soon. The stretcher- 



A Little " Strafeing " 59 

bearers are coming." So we passed the word for 
the stretcher-bearers. 

Then he took the water-bottle from the boy's side, 
and sat him up and gave him some water. He left 
the water-bottle with the chap, and went to hurry the 
stuetcher-bearers along. When he got round the 
corner of the trench, the boy was slipping back, and 
the water-bottle had fallen down. So I went over to 
him and propped him up again, and gave him some 
more water. 

The lieutenant came back jvith the stretcher- 
bearers, and he asked one of them, so the boy could 
not hear him, whether the boy would live. 

The stretcher-bearer said : "I don't think so. 
One through his chest, and right leg broken." 

The boy had kept quiet for a while, but all of a 
sudden he yelled, " In the name of Christ, give me a 
cigarette!" I handed him a cigarette butt I had 
found in the dug-out. We were all out of cigarettes. 

So they lit it for him and he kept quiet. As soon 
as they could, they got round the corner of the fire 
bay with him and through a communication trench 
to a field hospital. The lieutenant and I walked a 
little way with him, and he began to thank us, and 
he told the heutenant : " Old man, you have been a 
father and a mother to me." 

And the lieutenant said to him : " You have 
done damn well, old boy. You have done more than 
your share." 



6o Gunner Depew 

When they started into the communication 
trench the boy began to scream again. And the Ueu- 
tenant acted Uke a wild man. He took out his cigar- 
ette-case, but there were no cigarettes in it, and then 
Ihe swore and put it back again. But in a few minutes 
he had the case out again, and was swearing worse 
than ever, and talking to himself. 

" The boy isn't dying like a gentleman," he said. 
" Why, in God's name, couldn't he keep quiet? " 
I do not think he meant it. He was all nervous and 
excited, and kept taking out his cigarette-case and 
putting it back again. 

The other officer had gone on to inspect the"" sen- 
tries when the boy rolled into the trench, and a poilu 
came up to tell us that the officer had been hit. We 
walked back to where I had been, and there was the 
officer. If I had been there I would have got it, too, 
I guess. He was an awful mess. The veins were 
sticking out of his neck, and one side of him was 
blown off, so you could see his entrails. Also, his 
foot was wounded. That is what shrapnel does to 
you. As I crawled past him I happened to touch his 
foot, and he damned me all over the place. But when 
I tried to say I was sorry, I could not, for then he 
apologised and died a moment later. 

There was a silver cigarette-case sticking out of 
the rags where his side had been blown away, and the 
lieutenant crossed himself, and reached in and took 
out the case. But when he prised open the case he 



A Little " Strafeing " 6i 

found that it had been bent and cracked, and all the 
cigarettes were soaked with blood. He swore worse 
than ever then, and threw his own case away, putting 
the other officer's case in his pocket. 

At this point, our own artillery began shelling, 
and we received the order to stand to with fixed 
bayonets. When we got the order to advance, some 
of the men were already over the parapet, and the 
whole of us after them, and, believe me, I was as 
pale as a sheet, just scared to death. I think every 
man is when he goes over for the first time — every 
time for that matter. But I was glad we were going 
to get some action, because it is hard to sit about in a 
trench under fire and have nothing to do. I had all 
I could do to hold my rifle. 

We ran across No Man's Land. I cannot re- 
member much about it. But when we got to the 
German trench I fell on top of a young fellow, and 
mj^ bayonet went right through him. It was a crime 
to get him, at that. He was as delicate as a pencil. 

When I returned to our trenches after my first 
charge, I could not sleep for a long time afterwards 
for remembering what that fellow looked like, and 
how my bayonet slipped into him and how he 
screamed when he fell. He had his legs and his neck 
twisted under him after he got it. I thought about 
it a lot, and it grew to be almost a habit that when- 
ever I was going to sleep I would think about him, 
and then all hope of sleeping was gone. 



62 Gunner Depew 

Our company took a German trench that time 
and, along with another company, four hundred 
prisoners. We had to retire, because the men on our 
sides did not get through, and we were being flanked. 
But we lost a lot of men doing it. 

When we returned to our trenches we were simply 
done up, lying round in the front line like a heap of 
old rags in a narrow alley. None of us showed any 
signs of life, except a working party that was digging 
with picks and shovels at some bodies that had been 
frozen into the mud of the trench. 

I used to think all the Germans were big and 
fat and strong, and, of course, some of the Grenadier 
regiments are, but lots of the Bodies I saw were 
little and weak like the fellow I *' got " in my first 
charge. 

It was a good piece of work to take the prisoners, 
and a novelty for me to look them in the face—the 
fellows I had been fighting. Because, when you look 
a Hun in the face you can see the yellow streak. 
Even if you are their prisoner, you can tell that the 
Huns are yellow. 

Maybe you have heard pigs being butchered. It 
sounded like that when we got to them. When they 
attacked us, they yelled to beat the band. I guess 
they thought they could scare us. But you cannot 
scare machine-guns, nor the Foreign Legion, either. 
So when they could not scare us, they were up 
against it and had to fight. I will admit, though, that 



A Little " Strafeing " 63 

the first time Fritz came over and began yelling I 
thought the whole German army was after me, at 
that, and Kaiser Bill playing the drum. And how 
they hate a bayonet ! They would much rather sit in 
a ditch and pot you. 

I admit I am not crazy about bayonet fighting 
myself, as a general proposition, but I will say that 
there have been times when I was serving a gun 
behind the front lines when I wished for a rifle and 
a bayonet in my hands and a chance at Fritz man 
to man. 

It was in this charge that our chaplain was put 
out of commission. As we were lined up, waiting 
to climb on to the fire-step, and then over the para- 
pet, the chaplain came down the line speaking to 
each man as he went. He would not say much, but 
just a few words and then make the sign of the Cross. 
He was in a black cassock. 

He was just one man from me as we got the 
word and stood upon the fire-step. He was not 
armed with as much as a pin, but he jumped upon 
the step and stuck his head over the parapet, and got 
it square, landing right beside me. I thought he was 
killed, but when we got back we found he was only 
wounded. The men who saw it were over the para- 
pet before the order was given, and then the whole 
lot after them, because they, too, thought he was 
killed, and supposed he never would know how they 
came out about their vows. All the men in the 



64 Gunner Depew 

company were glad when they found he was only 
wounded. 

While half of us w^ere on the fire-step throughout 
the day, or night, the other half would be in the dug- 
outs, or sitting around in the bottom of the trench, 
playing little games, or mending clothes, or sleep- 
ing, or cooking, or doing a thousand and one things. 
The men were always in good humour at such times, 
and it seemed to me even more so when the enemy 
fire was heavy. 

If a man was slightly wounded, down would come 
the rifles to order arms, and some poilu was sure to 
shout, "Right this way! One franc! " It was a 
sort of standing joke, and they always did it. The 
poilu who did it most of the time was a Swiss, and 
he was always playing a joke on somebody, or imitat- 
ing some one of us, or making faces. 

Then he would shout, as though he was selling 
tickets to a show : " Don't rush ! There's plenty of 
room. Watch your purses ! " and so on. One time, 
while we were under a very heavy bombardment, and 
it was too dangerous to go through the communica- 
tion trenches, two fellows got wounded in the left 
hand. They were round the corner of the trench 
from each other, but this Swiss got wind of them and 
brought one of them up to the other and pretended 
to introduce them. He said they would now be com- 
rades in hands instead of arms, only that each had 
got it in the same hand. Pretty soon he had them 



A Little " Strafeing " 65 

playing marbles with some shrapnel bullets that had 
fallen near them. I do not know what countries 
these two fellows were from, but they both spoke 
Enghsh. I had never heard them speak anything but 
French before they were wounded, though. I tried 
to talk to them then, but they did not want to talk 
to me. They played marbles until they could go 
out to the dressing-station. 

This same Swiss got hold of a revolver some- 
where, and he used to spend his spare time potting 
trench rats. He would save some of his bread ration 
and put it on the parados, and then wait for the rats. 
He killed lots of them. He used to give some of the 
dead rats to the rifle grenadiers, and he claimed that 
they shot them over with the rifle grenades to Fritz. 
I do not know whether they really did so or not, but 
I know he used to throw dead rats at the German 
trenches when we were only forty-five yards from 
them. And some of the men said he went on a raid- 
ing party one time with a haversack full of dead rats. 

So we were all sorry when this Swiss *' went 
West," as the Limeys say, and we tried to keep up 
his jokes and say the same things and so forth. But 
they did not go very well after he was dead. He 
got his notice in the same charge in which the chap- 
lain was wounded. He was one of the bunch that 
charged before the order was given, when the chaplain 
got it, and was running pretty near me until we got 
to the Boche wire. I had to stop to get through, 



66 Gunner Depew 

though most of it was cut up by artillery fire, but he 
must have jumped it, for when I looked up he was 
twenty or thirty paces ahead of me. We got to the 
Germans about that time, and I was pretty busy for 
a while. But soon I saw him again. He was pulling 
his bayonet out of a Boche, when another one made 
a jab at him and stuck him in the arm. Then the 
Boche made a swing at him with his rifle, but the 
Swiss dropped on one knee and dodged it. He kept 
defending himself with his rifle, but there was another 
German on him by this time, and he could not get 
up. The corporal of our squad came up just about 
that time, but he was too late, because one of the 
Boches got to the Swiss with his bayonet. He did 
not have time to withdraw it before our corporal 
stuck him. The other German made a pass at the 
corporal, but he was too late. The corporal felled 
him with a terrific blow from his rifle butt. The 
Huns were pretty thick around there just as another 
fellow and myself came up. A Boche swung his rifle 
at the corporal and, when he dodged it, the Boche 
almost got me. The swing took him off his feet, and 
then the corporal did as pretty a bit of work as I ever 
saw. He jumped for the Boche who had fallen, 
landed on his face with both feet, and gave it to the 
next one with his bayonet all at the same time. He 
was the quickest man I ever saw. 

There were a couple of well-known shoemakers 
in the next company, and I saw one of them get 



A Little ** Strafeing " 67 

under Fritz's guard with his foot, and, believe me, 
there was some force in that kick. He must have 
driven the German's chin clear through the back of 
his neck. 

We thought it was pretty tough luck to lose both 
the chaplain and the village wit in the same charge, 
along with half of our officers, and then have to give 
up the trench. Every man in the bunch was sore as 
a boil when we got back. 

As you probably know, it is the usual thing to 
give the men in the trenches a small issue of rum 
before they go over the top to tackle the Bodies. 
They say there are lots of people in the States and 
other countries who think it is very wrong to give 
the soldiers rum. 

Well, now : 

Suppose you have not changed your shoes or 
socks for five days. And suppose that all this time 
you have been in water up to your knees, and have 
had to snatch your sleep, four hours at a time, in 
stinking mud that reminds you of the time they 
flushed the sewer in front of your house. Suppose 
your clothes are soaked through and through with 
rain, and mud, and sweat, and worse, and that they, 
too, have been on you for five days. And besides, 
they are so stiff with dirt, or maybe blood, that they 
will only bend where they are freshly wet 

Suppose you are simply swarming with lice. You 



68 Gunner Depew 

can hardly sleep for the itching all over your body, 
and when you roll over, sometimes, you can almost 
hear the crackling as the lice are mashed against you. 
Imagine yourself waking up some fine morning to 
find a rat almost as big as a cat gnawing your boot. 
Think of waking up suddenly in the dark and feeling 
the wet fur of a rat brush imder your chin 

And suppose, too, that a few yards in front 
of you there are rotting human bodies sunk in the 
mud. And some of them were once men who 
had given j^ou cigarettes and showed you photo- 
graphs 

Suppose your special pal's brains had been blown 
all over you two hours before. Think of the horror 
of reaching into a mud bank in the grey, cold morn- 
ing and puUing out a maggotty human hand 

You have lived between a thunder-clap and a flash 
of lightning for five days, and have stared at two walls 
of mud for the same length of time. And your 
nerves jump and shiver whenever there is a moment's 
silence 

Imagine the discomfort of lining up at 4.30 on 
a snowy morning, loaded down under dead pounds of 
pack, and overcoat and rifle. And suppose that, in 
a few minutes, you were going to climb over your 
mud wall, and run through the dark, and trip over 
barbed wire and bodies, and fall in shell holes full of 
slime ; that thousands of jagged pieces of iron were 
going to ,whizz past you, that machine-guns >vould 



A Little " Strafeing '' 69 

be sweeping over the whole field, that shells the size 
of umbrella-stands would be exploding all round you, 
that thousands of rifle bullets were searching for 
you 

Suppose, too, that if you got past all these things, 
you were going to stick a sharp piece of steel into a 
soft, grunting body, and put your foot in its ugly 
face and pull your steel out, and rush on and do it 
over again, and swing your rifle-butt against a chat- 
tering head. And that if you did not do these things 
they would be done to you, and probably would 
anyway 

And that, if you did do them, and your comrades 
did, there would be two or three hours' digging in 
the captured trench to hold it in the face of the 
enemy 

Suppose you were as miserable as five days' hell 
in a sewer could make you, and knew you had to do 
all these things, and that you would have to start 
doing them in fifteen minutes. Meanwhile you were 
so cold you could not move without aching, and you 
were consumed with the fear that the crucial moment 
might find you afraid 

And suppose the man next to you was just drink- 
ing a mouthful of stuff that would warm him, and 
brace him, and help him over into his day's work 

And suppose the non-com. was offering you a 
drink of the same stuff 

Wouldn't you take it? 



70 Gunner Depew 

You men in slippers, with fluffy balls on them, 
and fur around the edges, sitting in a Morris chair, 
with the throttle pulled way open, and a box of Peer- 
less Dainties on the arm 

What do you think about it? Do you not think 
that the boys over there ought to have a little of this 
stuff now and then? 

In the months that have passed since I returned 
to the States from the German prison camps, I have 
had one cocktail and two coffee cognacs. That is 
how it made a drunkard out of me. 



CHAPTER VII 

STOPPING THE HUNS AT DIXMUDE 

I WAS standing in a communication trench that con- 
nected one of our front Hne trenches with a crater 
caused by the explosion of a mine. All about me 
men of the third Hne were coming up, cHmbing 
around, digging, hammering, shifting planks, moving 
sandbags up and down, bringing up new timbers, 
reels of barbed wire, ladders, cases of ammunition, 
machine-guns, trench mortars — all the things that 
make an army look like a general stores on legs. 

The noise of the guns was just deafening. Our 
own shells passed not far above our heads, so close 
were the enemy trenches, and the explosions were so 
near and so violent that when you rested your rifle 
butt on something solid, like a rock, you could feel 
it shake and hum every time a shell landed. 

Our first line was just on the outskirts of the town, 
in trenches that had been won and lost by both sides 
many times. Our second line was in the streets, and 
the third line was almost at the south end of the 
town. 

The Huns were hard at it, shelling the battered 
remains of Dixmude, and to the right stretcher- 

71 



72 Gunner Depew 

bearers were working in lines so close that they 
looked like two parades passing each other. But the 
bearers from the company near me had not returned 
from the emergency dressing station, and the 
wounded were pihng up, waiting for them. 

A company of the 2nd Foreign Legion had come 
up to take their stations in the crater, under the 
parapet of sandbags. A shell landed among them 
just before they entered the crater, and sent almost 
a whole squad West, besides wounding several others. 

Almost before they occupied the crater the wires 
were laid and reached back to us, and the order came 
for us to remain where we were until further orders. 
So I began to walk slowly along behind a line of 
legionaries, who leaned up against the parapet with 
their rifles ready. 

I had not got very far when someone said, in a 
plain Bowery accent, " Ah there. Doc ! " and a little 
chap, in the uniform of the Legion, with a "tin 
basin " on his head, left his rifle leaning up against 
the parapet and walked over to where I was. 

"Don't you know me. Doc?" he said. "Nig 
Lamb, from the Fiftieth Ward? " 

" Well, I'll be damned," I said, " if it isn't my 
old side-kick. Nig! Right down here in the bald- 
head row. What do you think of that? " But I had 
never even heard of him before. 

" Guess you never thought you'd see me here in 
this tin derby, picking Fritzies and Heinies, did you? 



The Huns at Dixmude 73 

Ain't it hell the way they got this whole bunch sewed 
up in the gully ? ' ' 

Then he went back to the parapet and took up his 
rifle again, and I crouched down behind the parapet. 
'• Nig," I said, " how did you come to enlist in the 
Foreign Legion ? ' ' 

" Ahr-rr-r-r-r, " he said, and a whole lot of cuss 
words. " Too many vee-vees, that's what put little 
Fido in the sausage mill." 

I did not know what he was talking about, but I 
let him go on. 

" Me and two other boys was handling some 
ponies down to the Boolong track, when this here 
war busted open and put everything on the blink. 
' Aw hell ! ' I says, ' let's go back to Paris and look 
'em over before we ease back to the States.' 

" Say, these here dames had went crazy over this 
war stuff. ' Vive ! Vive la France ! ' they says, and 
by God, we vee-veed too. We put on a little party at 
one of them cafes, and hit the old vino till she hollered 
for help. Pretty soon we began waving little Ameri- 
can flags and hollering, ' To hell with the Huns ! ' and 
vee-veeing everything else, 

" Then, all I can remember is marching down 
the boolyvard with a guy in red pants, and I has a 
committee meeting with a lot of other guys, and 
pretty soon I was hollering : ' Wow, lemme at 'em ! 
Vee-vee la France ! ' and all like that. 

" When they asks me would I sign up, I guess I 

F 



74 Gunner Depew 

must have said ' vee-vee,' and they took it for ' oui, 
oui,' 'cause here I am, and a pretty damn long way 
from home. Ain't it so, Doe? " 

" So you didn't know you enUsted? " 

' ' Ahr-rr-r-r hell ! does it make any difference to 
these here guys what you know and what you don't? " 
Then he began firing, though none of the rest was 
doing so, and pretty soon a non-com. came along and 
made him quit. 

"There you are. Doc! " he said. " When you 
want action, you can't have it, and when you want 
peace and quiet — bam ! ' Go out and get me a few 
Heinies for breakfast,' they says. 

" Believe me, a guy can vee-vee himself into a lot 
of trouble if he yells loud enough," he said. " I'm 
getting mine right now." 

" Well," I said, " do you know anything better to 
vee-vee than France? " 

*' Yes," he said, " N'Yawk ! Vee-vee N'Yawk ! 
Vee-vee N'Yawk!" and he must have yelled it 
fifty times. Then he began shooting again. Lord 
knows what at, and the non-com. ran up and swore at 
him in French, and Nig let out another " vee-vee " 
or two and put down his rifle again. 

The non-com. looked at me and shook his head 
behind Nig's back and said " cafard.'' That is what 
they call it when a man goes crazy temporarily. But 
I knew it was just Nig's way of letting off steam. 

Nig was just starting to ask me some questions 



The Huns at Dixmude 75 

when the officers passed down the Hne. " Baion- 
nettes, mes enfants," and I went back to my own 
section. 

Then we got the complete orders. We were to 
make no noise, but >vere all to be ready in ten minutes. 
We put on goggles and respirators. In ten minutes 
the bombers were to leave the trenches. Three mines 
were to explode, and then we were to take and hold a 
certain portion of the enemy trenches not far off. 
We were all ready to start up the ladders when they 
moved Nig's section over to ours, and he sneaked 
up to me and whispered behind his hand, " Be a 
sport, Doc ; make it fifty-fifty and gimme a 
chance." 

I had no idea what he meant, and he had to get 
back to his squad. Then the bombers came- up to 
the ladders, masked, and with loaded sacks on their 
left arms. '' One minute now," said the officers, 
getting on their own ladders and drawing their re- 
volvers — though most of the officers of the Legion 
charged with rifle and bayonet, like their men. 

Then — Boom ! Slam ! Bang ! — and the mines 
went off. 

' ' Allez ! ' ' and then the parapet was filled with 
bayonets and men scrambling and crawling and fall- 
ing and getting up again. The smoke drifted back 
on us, and then our own machine-guns began ahead 
of us. 

Up towards the front, the bombers were fishing in 



76 Gunner Depew 

their bags and throwing, just Hke boys after a rat 
along the docks. The black smoke from the " Jack 
Johnsons" rolled over us, and probably there was 
gas, too, but you could not tell. 

The front lines had taken their trenches and gone 
on, and you could see them, when you stood on a 
parapet, running about like hounds through the 
enemy communication trenches, bombing out dug- 
outs, disarming prisoners — very scarey -looking in 
their masks and goggles. The wounded were coming 
back slowly. Then we got busy with our work in the 
dugouts and communication trenches and fire bays, 
with bayonets and bombs digging the Boches out and 
sending them "West." And every once in a while 
a Fritz on one side would step out and yell "Kama- 
rad," while, Hke as not, on the other side his pal 
would pot you with a revolver when you started to 
pick him up, thinking he was wounded. 

Then we stood aside at the entrance to a dugout 
and some Boches came out in single file, shouting 
" Kamarad " for all they were worth. One of them 
had his mask and face blown off ; yet he was trying 
to talk, with the tears rolling down over the raw flesh. 
He died five minutes later. 

Farther down the trench we found poor Nig. 
While we were taking off his " tin derby " and tunic, 
he asked who it was, and when I said, " It's Doc," he 
must have thought I was a medico, sure enough. 

"Through the belly. Doc. Gimme a drink." 



The Huns at Dixmude ^^ 

That would have finished him, of course, so I said 
there was no water. 

" All right, Doc, all right. I'll wait. It's in the 
belly, ain't it. Doc? It ain't nothing, is it? Pull 
me through. Doc." 

"Sure I will. Nig. You'll be all right in a 
minute." 

" Say, Doc, don't hand me no cones of hokey- 
pokey. Gimme a drop of the stuff. Tell me, do I 
croak. Doc? Well, I'm going to fool j^ou the same 
as I fooled the guys at Luke's Hospital the time I got 
shot up in the Subway. I've went through worse 
than this. I ain't hurt bad, am I, Doc? " 

I tried to say something to him, but he would not 
stop talking. 

' ' Would I let myself croak so as you can give me 
the ha-ha? I can see myself doing that, you bet. 
Say, Doc, will you talk business? " 

" Listen, Nig, the stretcher-bearers will be here 
in a second " 

"To hell with them guys! I'm asking you if 
you'll make it fifty-fifty. Fifty-fifty, fifty-fifty. Doc 
—fifty-fifty " 

He kept on, almost singing " fifty-fifty," and 
then he was quiet for a while. All of a sudden he 
sang out : " For Christ's sake, Doc, talk business ! " 
and then not a word out of him. 

The stretcher-bearers finally came up and took him 
away, but he did not let out a sound. They reported 



78 Gunner Depew 

later that he had got it in "the thigh and not the 
stomach, and a lad told me he kept yelling for Doc 
and singing " fifty-fifty." It got to be a sort of pass- 
word in his section, and I am telling the truth when 
I say that I have seen men from his company slipping 
the steel to Fritz and yelling, " Feefty-feefty, 
Doack," as they did it. 

I never did hear what happened to Nig, though. 
It was not his line, this war, as he said, and I hope 
he got back to "N'Yawk " before he went over the 
top for the last time. 

One night, while I was lying back in the trench 
trying not to think of anything and go to sleep, the 
bombs began to get pretty thick around and, when I 
could not stand it any longer, I rushed out into the 
bay of the fire-trench and right up against the parapet, 
where it was safer. 

Hundreds of star shells were being sent up by both 
sides, and the field and the trenches were as bright as 
day. All up and down the trenches our men were 
dodging about, keeping out of the way of the bombs 
that were being thrown in our faces. It did not 
seem as if there was any place where it was possible to 
get cover. Most of the time I was picking out of my 
eyes dirt that explosions had driven into them. 

If you went into a dugout, the men already there 
would shout, " Don't stick in a crowd — spread out ! " 
While you were in a dugout, you kept expecting to be 
buried alive, and when you went outside, you thought 



The Huns at Dixmude 79 

the Bodies were aiming at you direct — and there was 
no place at all where you felt safe. 

But the fire bay looked better than the other places 
to me. I had not been there more than a few minutes 
when a big one dropped in, and then that bay was just 
one mess. Out of the twenty-four men in the bay 
only eight escaped. We were just nothing but blood, 
with pieces of flesh, and brains, and entrails all over 
us. It made me so sick I had just tolie down, and 
vomit, and shake, and sweat. I could not move. 
But I knew that if that shell did not get me, the one 
that did would be the grand-daddy of all shells. 

When the stretcher-bearers got there they did not 
have much to do in the way of rescue — it was more 
pall-bearers' work. 

A stretcher-bearer was picking up one of the boys, 
when a grenade landed alongside of him, and you 
could not find a fragment of either of them. That 
made two that landed within twelve feet of me ; yet I 
was not even scratched. 

When I got so that I could move, I went over to 
where the captain was standing, looking through a 
periscope over the parapet. I was very nervous and 
excited, and \Yas afraid to speak to him, but somehow 
I thought I ought to ask for orders. But I could not 
say a word. Finally a shell whizzed over our heads — 
just missed us, it seemed Hke, and I broke out : 
" What do you see? What's all of the news? " and 
so on. I guess I chattered like a monkey. 



8o Gunner Depew 

Then he yelled: "You're the gunner officer. 
You're just in time — I've located their mortar 
batteries." 

I surely wished I was the gunner officer : I would 
have enjoyed it more if I could have got back at Fritz 
somehow. But I was not the gunner officer, and I 
told him so. I had to shout at him quite a while 
before he would believe me. Then he wanted me to 
find the gunner officer, but I did not know where to 
find him. If I could have got to our guns I guess I 
would have had another medal for working overtime, 
but I missed the chance there. 

About this time another bomb came over and 
knocked out the best friend I had in my company. 
Before the war he had been one of the finest singers 
in the Paris opera houses. When he was with us he 
used to say that the only difference between him and 
Caruso was $2,500 a night. 

A poilu and I dragged him into a dugout, but it 
was too late. One side of his face was blown off ; the 
whole right side of him was stripped off, and four 
fingers of the right hand were gone. 

I stuck my head out of the dugout, and there 
was the captain discussing the matter with himself, 
cursing the Germans from here to Heligoland, and 
putting in a word for the bombs every once in a 
while. All up and down the trenches you could hear 
our men cursing the Germans in all kinds of lan- 
guages. Believe me, I did my bit, and I could hear 



The Huns at Dixmude 8i 

somebody else using good old United States cuss 
words, too. It certainly did not make me feel any 
better, but it gave me something to do. I think 
that was why all of us cursed so much then, though 
we were pretty handy with language at any time. 
But when you are under heavy fire like that, and 
cannot give it back as good as you get, you go crazy 
unless you have something to do. Cussing is the 
best thing we could think of. 

Up the trench, the third bay was simply smashed 
in, and the Germans were placing bomb after bomb 
right in it and in ours. The captain yelled out that 
he was going up to the next bay to examine it, but 
no sooner had he got there than he had his head taken 
clean off his shoulders. 

At daybreak our trenches were all pounded in, 
and most of our dugouts were filled up. Then Fritz 
opened up with his artillery fire right on us. We 
thought they were going to charge, and we supposed 
their barrage would lift and we could see them come 
over. 

We received orders to stand to with fixed 
bayonets. Then the man at the periscope shouted : 
"They come!" 

A battery directly behind us went into action 
first, and then they all joined in, and inside of five 
minutes about eight hundred guns were raising hell 
with Fritz. The Boches were caught square in No 
Man's Land, and our rifles and machine-guns simply 



82 Gunner Depew 

mowed them down. Many of them came half-way 
across, then dropped their guns, and ran for our 
trenches to give themselves up. They could not have 
got back to their own trenches. 

It was a shame to waste a shell on these poor fish. 
If they had been civvies, the law would prevent you 
from hitting them — you know the kind. They could 
hardly drag themselves along. 

That is the way they look when you have got 
them. But when they have got you — kicks, cuffs, 
bayonet jabs — there is nothing they will not do to 
add to your misery. They seem to think that it keeps 
up their own courage. 

An artillery fire hke ours was great fun for the 
gunners, but it was not much fun for Fritz, or for 
us in the trenches. We got under cover almost as 
much as Fritz, and held thumbs for the gunners to 
get through in a hurry. 

Then the fire died down, and it was so quiet it 
made you jump. I heard the same man who had 
helped me cuss in American, shout out : " Old Fritz 
has got a bellyful of the hell he started now." We 
were so used to shouting we could not talk naturally 
for quite a while. I never did find out who this 
American was, although I looked for him and asked 
about him. 

We thought our parapet was busted up a good 
deal, but when we looked through the periscope 
and saw what had happened to Fritz's trenches. 



The Huns at Dixmude 83 

believe me, as the negro said, they were practically 
ruined. 

Out in No Man's Land, it looked like Wool- 
worth's 5-and-lO ; everywhere were grey uniforms, 
with tin cups and accoutrements that belonged to 
the Germans before our artillery and machine-guns 
got to them. 

Our stretcher-bearers were busy carrying the 
wounded back to the first-aid dressing-station, for, 
of course, we had suffered, too. From there the 
blesses were shipped to the clearing station. 

The dead lay in the trenches all day, and at night 
they were carried out by working parties to " Stiff 
Park," as I called it. 

A man with anything on his mind ought not to 
go to the front-line trenches. He will be crazy in- 
side of a month. The best way is not to give a tinker's 
curse whether it rains or snows : there are plenty of 
important things to worry about. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ON RUNNER SERVICE 

One night a man named Bartel and I were detailed 
for Runner service, and were instructed to go to Dix- 
mude and deliver certain dispatches to a man, whom 
I will call the Burgomaster, and report to the Branch 
Staff Headquarters that had been secretly located in 
another part of the town. We were to travel in an 
automobile and keep a sharp watch as we went, for 
Dixmude was being contested hotly at that time, and 
German patrols were in the neighbourhood. No one 
knew exactly where they would break out next. 

So we started out from the third-line trenches, 
but very shortly one of our outposts stopped us. 
Bartel carried the dispatches and drove the car too, 
so it was up to me to explain things to the sentries. 
They were convinced after a bit of arguing. Just as 
we were leaving, a message came over the 'phone 
from our commander, telling them to hold us when 
we came. It was lucky they stopped us, for other- 
wise we would have been out of reach by the time 
his message came. The commander told me, over 
the telephone, that if a French flag flew over the 
town, the coast would be clear ; if a Belgian, that our 

84 



On Runner Service 85 

forces were either in control, or were about to take 
over the place, but that German patrols were near. 
After this we started again. 

When we had passed the last post, we kept a 
sharp lookout for the flag on the pole of the old Fish 
Market, for by this we would get our bearings — and 
perhaps, if it should be a German flag, a timely 
warning. But after we were down the road a bit and 
had got clear, we saw a Belgian flag whipping around 
in a good strong breeze. But while that showed 
that our troops, or the British, were about to take 
over the place, it also indicated that the Germans 
were somewhere near by. Which was not so 
cheerful. 

As we went through the suburbs along the canal, 
which runs on the edge of the town, we found that 
all the houses were battered up. We tried to hail 
several heads that stuck themselves out of the spaces 
between buildings and withdrew themselves just as 
quickly, but we could not get an answer. Finally, 
we got hold of a man who came out from a little 
cafe. 

He told us that the Germans had been through 
the town, and had shot it up considerably, killing 
and wounding a few inhabitants, but that shortly 
afterwards a small force of Belgian cavalry had 
arrived and driven the Boches out. The Germans 
were expected either to return or begin a bombard- 
ment at any moment, and all the inhabitants who 



86 Gunner Depew 

.sported cellars were hiding in them. The rest were 
trying to get out of the town with their belongings 
as best they could. 

On reaching our objective, we made straight for 
the Hotel de Ville, where we were admitted and, 
after a short wait, taken to the Burgomaster. We 
questioned him as to news, for we had been instructed 
to pick up any information he might have as to con- 
ditions. But we did not get much, for he could not 
go about because of the Germans, who had made it a 
policy to terrorise the people of the town. 

We had just got into the car, and were about to 
start, when the Burgomaster himself came running 
out. He ordered us to leave the car there, and said 
he would direct us where to go. He insisted that we 
should go on foot, but I could not understand when 
he tried to explain why. 

About fifty yards away, the other side of the road 
was piled high with rifles, lances, bayonets, and all 
kinds of weapons. But the Burgomaster would not 
explain this. He certainly was a pig-headed boy, if 
there ever was one. He began puffing about this 
time, and I thought he was wishing he had let us 
drive him in the car. Finally, he said he would go 
back, and he showed us which way our course lay. 

We saw two soldiers ahead of us on the road, and 
we waved at them and tried to make them stop, but 
they did not pay the slightest attention. We sprinted 
a bit and caught up with them, and after a while they 



On Runner Service 87 

cut loose and began to talk. One of them, a lad of 
about eighteen, had on a pair of cavalry boots, which 
he had pulled off of a German he had killed. He 
told us about it several times, and we laughed and 
kidded him along, until he must have thought us the 
best fellows he had ever seen. Actors are not the 
only people who like applause. Then we left the 
road. 

We soon saw the probable reason for the Burgo- 
master's refusal to ride in the car. All round for 
about a mile the roads were heavily mined, and small 
red flags on iron staves were stuck between the cob- 
blestones as warnings not to put in much time around 
those places. Also there were notices stuck up all 
about warning people of the mines, and forbidding 
heavy carts to pass. When we got off of the road I 
breathed again ! 

After a great deal of questioning, we finally 
reached our destination, and made our report to the 
local commandant. We told him all we could and, 
in turn, received various bits of information from 
him. We were then taken over to the hotel. Here 
we read a few Paris newspapers that were several 
weeks old until about eight, when we had dinner, 
and a fine dinner it was, too. 

After we had eaten all we could, and wished for 
more room in the hold, we went out into the garden 
and yarned a while with some gendarmes and then 
went to bed. We had a big room on the third floor 



88 Gunner Depew 

front. We had just turned in, and were all set for a 
good night's rest, when there was an explosion of a 
different kind from any I had heard before, and we 
and the bed were roeked about like a canoe in the 
wake of a stern-wheeler. 

There were seven more explosions, and then they 
stopped, though we could hear the rattle of a machine- 
gun at some distance away. Bartel said it must be 
the Forts, and after some argument I agreed with 
him. He said that the Germans must have tried an 
advance under cover of a bombardment, and that as 
soon as the Forts got into action, the Germans 
breezed. We were not worried much, so we did not 
get out of bed. 

A few minutes later we heard footsteps on the 
roof, and then a woman in a window across the street 
asking a gendarme whether it was safe to go back to 
bed. Then I got up and took a look into the street. 
There were a lot of people standing around talking, 
but it was not interesting enough to keep a tired man 
up, so into the hay. Bartel was already fast asleep, 
but he did not get much of a start on me at that, for 
I think I must have slept twice as hard as he did to 
catch up. 

It seemed about the middle of the night when 
Bartel called me, saying it was time to get to work. 
We found he had made a poor guess, for when we 
were half dressed, he looked at his watch and it was 
only a quarter past seven, but we decided to stay up, 



On Runner Service 89 

since we were that far along, and then go down and 
cruise for a breakfast. 

When we got downstairs and found some of the 
hotel people, it took them a long time to get it into 
our heads that there had been some real excitement 
during the night. The explosions w^ere those of 
bombs dropped by a Zeppelin, which had sailed over 
the city. 

The first bomb had fallen less than two hundred 
yards from where we slept. No wonder the bed 
rocked ! It had struck a narrow three-storey house 
round the corner from the hotel and had blown it to 
bits. Ten people had been killed outright and a 
number died later. The bomb tore a fine hole and 
hurled pieces of itself several hundred yards. The 
street itself was filled with stones, and a number of 
houses were down and others wrecked. When we 
got out into the street and talked with some army 
men, we found that even they were surprised by the 
force of the explosion. 

We learned that the Zepp had sailed not more 
than five hundred feet above the town. Its motor 
had been stopped just before the first bomb was let 
go, and it had slid along perfectly silent with all 
lights out. The purr that we had thought was 
machine-guns, after the eighth explosion, was the 
starting of the motor as the Zepp got out of range 
of the guns that were being set for the attack. 

The last bomb had struck in a large square. It 

G 



go Gunner Depew 

tore a hole in the cobblestone pavement about thirty 
feet square and five feet deep. Every window in the 
square was smashed. The fronts of the houses were 
riddled with various-sized holes. All the crockery, 
and china, and mirrors in the houses were in 
fragments. 

Not much more than an hour before the Zepp 
came, we had been sitting in a room at the house of 
the local military Commandant, right under a big 
glass-dome skylight. This house was now a very 
pretty ruin, and it was just as well that we left when 
we did. You could not even find a splinter of the big 
round table. The next time I sit under a glass sky- 
light in Dixmude, I want a lad with a live eye for 
Zeppelins on guard outside. 

Something about the Branch Headquarters ruins 
made us think of breakfast, which we had forgotten, 
so back to the hotel. Then we started for our 
lines. We were ordered to keep to the main road all 
the way, or we would be shot on sight, and to report 
to headquarters immediately on our return. I 
thought if the sight of me was so distasteful to any- 
body, I would not take the chance of offending, 
being anxious to be polite in such cases. So we stuck 
to the main road. 

Fritz did not give us any trouble and we were 
back by five, with all hands out to greet us when we 
hove in sight, and a regular prodigal-son welcome 
on tap, for we were later than they had expected. 



On Runner Service 91 

and they had made up their minds that some accident 
had happened. 

While I was round Dixnmde, I saw many living 
men and women and children who had been mutilated 
by the Germans, but most of them were women and 
children. Almost everyone of the mutilated men was 
too old for military service. The others had been 
killed, I guess. 

But the Belgians were not the only ones who 
had suffered from German kultur. Many French 
wounded were tortured by the Huns, and we were 
constantly finding the mutilated bodies of our troops. 
It was thought that the Germans often mutilated a 
dead body as an example to the living. 

The Germans had absolutely no respect whatever 
for the Red Cross. For instance, they captured a 
wagon loaded with forty French wounded, and shot 
everyone of them. I saw the dead bodies. 

When the Germans came to Dixmude, they col- 
lected all the men and women and children, and made 
them march before them with their hands in the air. 
Those who did not were knocked down. After a 
while some of them saw what they were going to get 
and, being as game sports as I ever heard of, tried to 
fight. They were killed out of hand, of course. 

The former burgomaster had been shot and fin- 
ished off with an axe, though he had not resisted, 
because he wanted to save the lives of his citizens. 



92 Gunner Depew 

They told me of one case, in Dixmude, where a man 
came out of his house, trying to carry his father, a 
man of eighty, to the square, where they were ordered 
to report. The old man could not raise his hands, so 
they dragged his son away from him, knocked the 
old man on the head with an axe, and left him there 
to die. Those who were spared were made to dig 
the graves for the others. 

There was a doctor in Dixmude who certainly 
deserves a military cross if any man ever did. He 
was called from his house by the Germans at 5,30 
one morning. He left his wife, who had had a baby 
two days before, in the house. He was taken to the 
square, lined up against a wall with three other big 
men of the town. 

Then he saw his wife and baby being carried to 
the square on a mattress by four Germans. He 
begged to be allowed to kiss his wife good-bye, and 
they granted him permission. As he stepped away, 
there was a rattle and the other men went West. 
They shot him, too, but though he was riddled with 
bullets he lived somehow, and begged the German 
officer to let him accompany his wife to the prison 
where they were taking her. This was granted, too, 
but on the way they heard the sound of firing. The 
soldiers yelled, " Die Franzosen ! " and dropped the 
mattress and ran. But it was only some of their own 
butchers at work. 

Dr. Laurent carried his wife and baby to an old 



On Runner Service 93 

aqueduct that was being rebuilt by the creek. There 
they lived for three days and three nights on the few 
herbs and the water that Dr. Laurent sneaked out 
and got at night. Dr. Laurent says that when the 
Germans killed and crucified the civilians at Dix- 
mude, they first robbed them of their watches, 
pocket-books, rings and other things. One lady 
[name deleted by Censor] had three thousand francs 
stolen from her and was misused besides. 

These were only a few of the things that happened 
at just one place where the Germans got to work with 
their kultur. So you can picture the Belgians agree- 
ing to a German peace while there is a Belgian alive 
to argue about it. They will remember the Germans 
a long time, I think. But they need not worry : 
there are a lot of us who will not forget, either. 



CHAPTER IX 

LAID UP FOR REPAIRS 

One night after I li;id been at Dixmude for about 
three weeks, we made a charge in the face of very 
heavy fire. Our captain always stood at the parapet 
when we were going over, and made the sign of the 
Crosis and shouted, " For God and France ! " Then 
we would go over. Our officers always led us, but I 
have never seen a German officer lead a charge. They 
always were behind their men, driving instead of 
leading. I do not believe they are as brave as they 
are said to be. 

Well, we went over this time, and the machine- 
guns were certainly going strong. We were pretty 
sore about the chaplain and the Swiss and all that, 
and we put up an awful fight, but we could not make 
it and had to come back. Only one company reached 
the Boche trenches, and not a man of it returned save 
those who had been woimded on the way and so did 
not reach the trench. They were just wiped out. 

The captain was missing, too. We thought he 
was done for, but about two o'clock in the morning 
he came back. He simply fell over into the trench, 
all in. He had been wounded four times, and had 

94 



Laid Up for Repairs 95 

lain in a shell crater full of water for several hours. 
He would not go back for treatment then, and when 
daylight came it was too late, because we were prac- 
tically cut off by artillery fire behind the front-line 
trenches. 

When daylight came, the artillery fire opened up 
right on us, and the Germans had advanced their 
lines into some trenches formerly held by us and 
hardly forty -five yards away. We received bombs 
and shells right in our faces. A Tunisian in our com- 
pany got crazy and ran back over the parados. He 
ran a few yards, then stopped and looked back at us. 
I think he was coming to his senses and would 
have started back to us. Then the spot where 
he had been was empty, and a second later 
his body from the chest down fell not three 
yards from the parados. I do not know where 
the top part went. That same shell cut a groove in 
the low hill-top before it exploded. He had been hit 
by a big shell and absolutely cut in two. I have seen 
this happen to four men, but this was the only case 
in Flanders. 

About seven o'clock we received reinforcements, 
and poured fresh troops over and re-took the trench. 
No sooner had we entered it, however, than the Ger- 
mans turned their artillery on us, not even waiting 
for their own troops to retire safely. They killed 
numbers of their own men in this way. But the fire 
was so heavy that, when they counter-attacked, we 



96 Gunner Depew 

had to retire again, and this time they followed us and 
drove us beyond the trench we had originally 
occupied. 

We left them there, with our artillery taking care 
of them, and our machine-guns trying to enfilade 
them, and moved to the right. There was a group of 
trees thereabout like a small wood and, as we passed, 
the Germans concealed in it opened fire on us, and we 
retired to some reserve trenches. We were pretty 
much scattered by this time and badly cut up. We 
re-formed there and were joined by others of our 
troops, in small groups — what was left of squads and 
platoons and singly. Our captain had got it a fifth 
time, meanwhile, but he would not leave us, as he 
was the ranking officer. He had a scalp wound, but 
the others were in his arms and shoulders. He could 
not move his hands at all. 

But he led our charge when we ran for the woods. 
We carried some machine-guns with us as we went, 
and the gunners would run a piece, set up, fire while 
we opened up for them and run on again. Some 
troops came out of a trench still farther to the right 
and helped us, and we drove the Germans out of the 
wood and occupied it ourselves. 

From there we had the Germans in our old trench 
almost directly from the rear and we simply cleaned 
them out. I think all the vows were kept that day, 
or else the men who made them died first. 

I was shot through the thigh some time or other 



Laid Up for Repairs 97 

after the captain got back. It felt just like a needle- 
prick at first, and then for a while my leg was numb. 
A couple of hours after we recaptured our trench I 
started out for the rear and hospital. The wound had 
been hurting for some time. They carried the cap- 
tain out on a stretcher about the same time, but he 
died on the way from loss of blood. Fresh troops 
came up to relieve us, but our men refused to go, and 
though officially they were not there in the trench 
they stayed until they took the captain away. Then 
back to billets — not bullets this time. I believe that 
we were mentioned in the dispatches for that piece of 
work, but I do not know as I was in the hospital for 
a short time afterwards. I do not remember much 
about going to the hospital except that the ambulance 
made an awful racket going over the stone-paved 
streets of Etaples and that the bearer who picked up 
one end of my stretcher had eyes like a dead fish's 
floating on water; also that there were some civvies 
standing around the entrance as we were being 
carried in. 

The first thing they do in the hospital is to take 
off your old dirty bandages and slide your stretcher 
under a big electric magnet. A doctor comes in and 
places his hand over your wound, and they let down 
the magnet over his hand and turn on the juice. If 
the shell fragment or bullet in you is more than seven 
centimetres deep you cannot feel the pain. The first 
doctor reports to the chief how deep your wound is 



gS Gunner Depew 

and where it is situated, and then a nurse comes up 
to you where you lie with your clothes still on and 
asks you to take the " pressure." 

Then they lift you on a four-wheeled cart and roll 
you to the operating theatre. They take off your 
clothes there. I remember I liked to look at the 
nurses and surgeons, they looked so good in their 
clean white clothes. 

Then they stick hollow needles into you, which 
hurt a good deal, and you take the pressure. After 
a while they begin cutting away the bruised and 
maybe rotten flesh, removing the old cloth, pieces of 
dirt, and so forth, and scraping away the splinters of 
bone. 

You think for sure your are going to bleed to 
death. The blood rushes through you like lightning, 
and if you get a sight of yourself you can feel yourself 
turning pale. Then they hurry you to your bed and 
cover you over with blankets and hot-water bottles. 
They raise your bed on chairs so the blood will run up 
towards your head, and after a while your eyes open 
and the doctor says, " Oui, oui, il vivra," meaning 
that you still had some time to spend before finally 
going West. 

The treatment we got in the hospital was great. 
We received cigarettes, tobacco, matches, magazines, 
and clean clothes. The men do not talk about tlieir 
wounds much, and everybody tries to be happy and 
(to show it. The food was fine and there was lots of it. 



Laid Up for Repairs 99 

I do not think there were any doctors in the 
world better than ours, and they were always trying 
to make things easy for us. They did not rip the 
dressings off your wounds as some of the butchers do 
in some of our dispensaries that I know of, but took 
them off carefully. Everything was very clean and 
sanitary, and some of the hospitals had sun parlours 
which were well used, you can be sure. 

Some of the men made toys and fancy articles 
such as button-hooks and paper-knives. They made 
the handles from empty shell cases or shrapnel or 
pieces of Zeppelin or anything else picked up at the 
front. 

When they are getting well the men learn har- 
ness-making, mechanical drawing, telegraphy, gar- 
dening, poultry-raising, typewriting, book-keeping, 
and teach the nurses how to make canes out of shell 
cases, and rings of aluminium, and slippers and gloves 
out of blankets. 

The nurses certainly work hard. They have more 
to do than they ought to, but they never complain, 
and are always cheerful and ready to play games when 
they have the time or read to some poilu. And their 
work is pretty dirty, too : I would not like to have to 
do it. They say there were lots of French Society 
ladies working as nurses, but you never heard much 
about Society or any talk about Lord Helpus or 
Count Whosis or pink teas or anything like that from 
these nurses. 



100 Gunner Depew 

A few shells landed near our hospital while I was 
there, but no patient was hit. They knocked a shrine 
of Our Lady to splinters, though, and bowled over a 
big crucifix. The kitchen was near by, and it was 
just the chef's luck that he had walked over to our 
ward to see a pal of his when a shell landed plumb in 
the eentre of the kitchen, and all you could see all over 
the barracks was stew. 

That was a regular Eatless Day for us until they 
rigged up bogies and got some more dixies and mixed 
up some corn meal for us. The chef made up for it 
the next day, though. This chef was a great little 
guy. He was a hlesse himself, and I guess his 
stomach sympathised with ours, for he certainly was 
the " Carry On Kid," as Butler called him, when it 
came to food. Most of the cooks were all right, any- 
way. At the field kitchens the cooks worry a lot if 
the men do not get enough food. They are always 
glad to see the boys again when they are withdrawn, 
and the first thing out of their mouths is, " Whom 
did you lose this time? " As a rule, they give the 
boys a specially fine meal before they go back to the 
front-line trenches, for, as the cook says, you do not 
know how many will ever get it again. 

This Bill Butler I have mentioned was a great 
card. He was from Oklahoma, I think, and he must 
have been six foot four in his stockings. He was 
always getting up some kind of joke or writing funny 
pieces. He thought more Americans ought to get 



Laid Up for Repairs loi 

into the scrap, so he wrote up a humorous advertise- 
ment which he said he would have printed on posters 
and stuck up on every bill board in the United States. 
He said it with a straight face, and the Frenchmen 
thought he meant it until another fellow and I 
translated it to them. 

After a while Butler got so he could walk about, 
and he used to make regular trips to different wards. 
The men got to know him well, and they were always 
glad to see him. He would not be in a w^ard a minute 
before he had them all going. 

He would come down the aisle between the cots 
imitating a man who drives ahead of a circus in a 
buggy in the small towns. 

"Yore bosses! Yore bosses! Watch yore 
bosses — ^the elephants are now coming over the 
bridge ! ' ' 

The Frenchmen did not know what it was 
about at all, but he said it in such a deep voice, and 
stuck out his chest, and " geed " up his horses, and 
pulled them up, and drove on again, and all this 
in such a funny way that he had them laughing all 
the time. 

One of the nurses went to Paris on leave for three 
days and Bill got her to buy him a silk hat. When 
she came back with it he always w^ore it when he 
walked round the wards, and he could do all kinds of 
tricks with it. When he left they hung his hat on 
the wall and wrote his name under it. 



102 Gunner Depew 

When Butler could get a bunch of blesses to- 
gether he would sometimes act a whole play by him- 
self. He got some cards and lettered them, "Vil- 
lain," "Hero," "Heroine," "Giles the Faithful 
Servant," " Hobbs, a Villager," and so forth. After 
he had finished being Giles the Faithful Servant he 
would take off that sign and put on ' ' Hero ' ' or what- 
ever came next, and on with the play. He surely was 
a card. 

There was a Frenchman in the bed next to him 
who had the whole side of his face torn off. He told 
me he had been next to a bomber who had just lit a 
fuse, and as he did not think it was burning fast 
enough he blew on it. It burned fast enough after 
that, and there he was. He was the only hlesse who 
did not seem to care for Butler's comedy : it hurt him 
to laugh. 

There was a Belgian in one of the other wards 
whom I got to know pretty well, and he would often 
come over and visit me. He asked many questions 
about Dixmude, for he had had relatives there though 
he had lost track of them. He often tried to 
describe the house they had lived in so that I might 
tell him whether it was still standing or not, but I 
could not remember the place he spoke of. During 
our talks he told me about many atrocities. Some 
of the things he told me I had heard before, and 
some of them I heard of afterwards. Here are some 
things that he either saw or heard of from victims. 



Laid Up for Repairs 103 

He said that when the Germans entered the town 
of St. Quentin they started firing into the windows 
as they passed along. First, after they had occupied 
the town, they bayoneted every working man they 
met with. Then they took about half of the children 
they could find and killed them with their musket 
butts. After this they marched the remainder of 
the children and the women to the square where they 
had lined up a row of male citizens against a wall. 
The women and children were told that if they moved 
they would all be shot. Another file of men was 
brought up and made to kneel in front of the other 
men against the wall. 

The women and children began to beg for the 
lives of the men, and many of them were knocked on 
the head with gun butts before they stopped. 

Then the Germans fired at the double rank of 
men. After three volleys there were eighty-four 
dead and twenty wounded. Most of the wounded 
they then killed with axes, but somehow three or 
four escaped by hiding under the bodies of others and 
playing dead, though the officers walked up and down 
tiring their revolvers into the piles of bodies. 

The next day the Germans went through the wine 
cellars and shot all the inhabitants they found hiding. 
A lot of people who had taken refuge in a factory 
overnight decided to come out with a white flag. 
They were allowed to think that the white flag would 
be respected, but no sooner had they all come out 



104 Gunner Depew 

than they were seized and the women pubhcly violated 
in the square, after which the men were shot. A 
paralytic was shot as he sat in his armchair, and a boy 
of fourteen was taken by the legs and pulled apart. 

At one place a man was tied by the arms to the 
ceiling of his room and set on fire. His trunk was 
completely carbonized, but his head and arms 
were unburned. At the same place the body 
of a fifteen-year-old boy was found pierced by more 
than twenty bayonet thrusts. Other dead were 
found with their hands still in the air, leaning up 
against walls. 

At another place the Germans shelled the town 
for a day and then entered and sacked it. The 
women and children were turned loose, without being 
allowed to take anything with them, and forced to 
leave the town. Nearly five hundred men were de- 
ported to Germany. Three, who were almost ex- 
hausted by hunger, tried to escape. They were 
bayoneted and clubbed to death. Twelve men who 
had taken refuge in a farm were tied together and 
shot in a mass. Another group of six were tied to- 
gether and shot after the Germans had put out their 
eyes and tortured them with bayonets. Three 
others were brought before their wives and children 
and sabred. 

The Belgian told me he was at Namur when the 
Germans began shelling it. The bombardment lasted 
the whole of August 21 and 22, 1914. They centred 



Laid Up for Repairs 105 

their fire on the prison, the hospital, and the railway 
station. They entered the town at four o'clock in 
the afternoon of August 23. During the first twenty- 
four hours they behaved themselves, but on the 24th 
they began shooting at anyone they pleased, and set 
fire to different houses in five of the principal squares. 

Then they ordered everyone to leave his house, 
and those who did not were shot. The others, about 
four hundred in all, were drawn up in front of the 
church close to the river bank. The Belgian said 
he could never forget how they looked. 

" I can remember just how it was," he said. 
" There were eight men, whom I knew very well, 
standing in a row with several priests. Next came 
two good friends of mine named Balbau and Guil- 
laume, with Balbau's seventeen-year old son, then 
two men who had taken refuge in a barn and had 
been discovered and blinded, then two other men 
whom I had never seen before. 

" It was awful to see the way the women were 
crying — ' Shoot me, too, shoot me with my husband.' 

'* The men were lined up on the edge of the 

hollow which runs from the high road to the bottom 

*4)f the village. One of them was leaning on the 

shoulders of an old priest, and he was crying, ' I am 

too" young — I can't face death bravely.' 

" I couldn't bear the sight any longer. I turned 
my back to the road and covered my eyes. I heard 
the volley and the bodies falling. Then someone 

H 



io6 Gunner Depew 

cried, ' Look, they're all down ! ' But a few 
escaped." 

This Belgian had escaped by hiding — he could not 
remember how many days — in an old cart filled with 
manure and rubbish. He had chewed old hides for 
food, had swum across the river, and hid in a mud 
bank for a week longer, and finally got to France. 

He took it very hard when we talked about Dix- 
mude, and I told him that the old church was just 
shot to pieces. He asked about a painting called the 
"Adoration of the Magi," and one of the other 
prisoners told us it had been saved and transported to 
Germany. If that is true, and they do not destroy 
it meanwhile, we will get it back, don't worry ! 

My wound was just a clean gunshot wound and 
not very serious, so, although it was not completely 
healed, they let me go after three weeks. But before 
I went I saw something that no man of us will ever 
forget. Some of them took vows, like the men of 
the Legion I have told about. 

One of the patients was a German doctor who 
had been picked up in No Man's Land, very seriously 
wounded. He was given the same treatment as any 
of us, that is, the very best, but finally, the doctors 
gave him up. They thought he would die slowly, 
though it might take several weeks. 

But there was a nurse there who took special in- 
terest in his case, and she stayed up day and night for 
some time and finally brought him through. The 



Laid Up for Repairs 107 

case was very well known, and everybody said she 
had performed a miracle. He got better slowly. 

Then a few weeks later, when he was out of dan- 
ger and was able to walk, and it was only a question 
of time before he would be rektised from the hos- 
pital, this nurse was transferred to another hospital. 
Everybody knew her and liked her, and when she 
went round to say good-bye all the men were sorry 
and gave her little presents and wanted her to write 
to them. She was going to get a nurse she knew in 
the other hospital to turn her letters into English so 
that she could write to me. I gave her a ring I had 
made from a piece of shell case, but I guess she had 
hundreds of them at that. 

But this German doctor would not say good-bye to 
her. That would not have made me sore, but it made 
this French girl feel very bad, and she began to cry. 
One of the French officers saw her and found out about 
the doctor, and the officer went up and spoke to the 
German. Then the French officer left, and the 
German called to the nurse and she went over 
to him and stopped crying. They talked for a little 
while, and then she put out her hands as if she w^as 
going to leave. He put out his hands, too, and took 
hold of hers. And then he twisted her wrists and 
broke them. We heard the snap. 

There were men in that ward who had not been on 
foot since the day they came to the hospital, and one 
of them was supposed to be dying, but it is an 



io8 Gunner Depew 

absolute fact that when we heard her sereani there 
was not a man left in bed. 

Now, I have heard people say that it is not the 
Germans we are fighting, but the Kaiser and his sys- 
tem. Well, it may be true that some of the Boche 
soldiers would not do these things if they did not have 
to' : speaking for myself, I am not so sure of it. 

But you take this doctor. Here he was, an 
educated man, who had been trained all his life to 
help people who were in pain, and not to cause it. 
And he was not where he would have to obey the 
Kaiser or any other German. And this nurse had 
saved his life. 

So I do not see that there is any argument about 
it. He broke that girl's wrists because he wanted to ; 
that is all there is to it. Now I say this German doc- 
tor was a dirty cur and a scoundrel. But I say that 
he is a fair sample of most of the Germans I have met. 
And it is Germans of this kind that we are fighting 
—not merely the Kaiser. 

It is like going to college. I have never been 
there, but I have heard some people say it did not do 
a man any good to go. But I have never heard a man 
who went there say that. Probably you have not 
been in Flanders or France, and maybe you think 
we are not fighting the German people, but only the 
Kaiser and his flunkeys. 

Well, nobody had better tell me that. Because 
I have been there and I have seen this. And I know. 



CHAPTER X 

HELL AT GALLIPOLI 

After I was discharged from the hospital I was 
ordered to report to my ship at Brest for sea duty. 

The boys aboard the Cassard gave me a hearty 
welcome, especially Murray, who had come back 
after two weeks in the trenches at Dixmude. I was 
glad to see them, too, for, after all, they were garbles, 
and I always feel more at home with them than with 
soldiers. Then, it was pretty rough stuff at Dix- 
mude, and after resting at the hospital I was keen 
on going to sea again. 

The Cassard was in dry dock for repairs after her 
last voyage to the Dardanelles as convoy to the troop- 
ship Diipleijo. Everything was being rushed to get 
her out as soon as possible, and crews were working 
day and night. There were other ships there, too — 
super-dreadnoughts, and dreadnoughts, and battle- 
ships, and armoured cruisers, all being overhauled. 

We received and placed guns of newer design, 
filled the magazines with the highest explosives 
known to naval use, and generally made ready for a 
hard job. Our magazines were filled with shells for 
our big 12- and 14-inch guns. A 14-inch shell can 
tear a hole through the heaviest armour-plate at 

109 



no Gunner Depew 

12,000 yards, and will do more damage than you 
would think. 

When we had coaled and got our stores aboard we 
dressed for action — or, rather, undressed. The decks 
were clear, hatch covers were bolted and davits folded 
down, furniture, chests, tables, chairs were sent 
ashore, and inflammable gear, like our rope ham- 
mocks, went overboard. You could not find a single 
wooden chair or table in the ward-room. 

When a ship is cleared for action a shell bursting 
inside cannot find much to set afire, and if one bursts 
on deck there is nothing to burn but the wooden 
deck, and that is covered with steel plate. 

Finally, we had roll call — all men present. Then 
we set sail for the Dardanelles as escort to the 
Dupleix, which had on board territorial and provin- 
cial French troops — Gascons, Parisians, Normans, 
Indo-Chinese, Spahis, Turcos — all kinds. When we 
messed we had to squat on the steel mess deck and 
eat from metal plates. 

There had been a notice posted before we left that 
the Zeppelins had commenced sea raids, and we kept 
a live eye out for them. This news proved to be a 
fake, though, and we did not see a single cigar while 
we were out. 

We made the trip to the Dardanelles without 
sighting an enemy craft, keeping in close touch with 
the Dtiplekv, and busy every minute preparing for 
action. 



Hell at Gallipoli m 

I was made gun captain and given charge of the 
starboard bow turret, mounting two 14-inch guns. I 
had my men at gun practice daily, and by the time 
we neared the Dardanelles, after five days, they were 
in pretty fair shape. 

It was about five a.m. when we drew near Cape 
Helles and took stations for action. The Dupleix 
was in front of us. The batteries on the Cape opened 
upon us, and a few minutes later those at Kum Kaleh 
joined in. 

As the Diipleix made for " V " Beach and pre- 
pared to land her troops we swung broadside on, rak- 
ing their batteries as we did so, and received a shell, 
which entered through a gun port in the after turret 
and exploded. Some bags of powder stored there 
(where they should never have been) were fired, and 
the roof of the turret was just lifted off. It landed on 
deck, tilted up against the side of the turret. 

On deck the rain of fire was simply terrific. Steel 
flew in all directions. It was smash, crash, slam-bang 
all the time, and I do not mind saying I never 
thought we would come out of it. 

Some of the heavy armour-plate up forward was 
shot away, and after that the old Cassard looked to me 
more like a monitor than anything else. As we drew 
nearer the shore they began using shrapnel on us, and 
in no time at all our funnels were shot full of holes, 
and a sieve was watertight compared with them. 

Naturally, we were not taking all this punishment 



112 Gunner Depew 

without any compensation. Our guns were at it fast, 
and from the way the fire slackened in certain places 
we knew we were making it effective. My guns did 
for two enemy pieces that I know of, and perhaps for 
several others. 

The French garbies were a good deal more ex- 
cited in action than I thought they would be. They 
were dodging round below decks trying to miss the 
shrapnel that came aboard, shouting, swearing, sing- 
ing — but fighting hard, at that. They stood the gaff 
just as well as any other garbies would, only in their 
own sweet way — which is noisy enough, believe me. 

One of our seamen was hit one hundred and thirty 
times by fragments of shrapnel, so you can see what 
they were up against in the dodging line. A gun 
turret in action is not exactly the best place on earth 
for a nervous man, nor for one who likes his comfort. 
There is an awful lot of heat, and noise, and smell, 
and work, all the time in a fighting gun turret. But 
during an engagement I would rather be in a gun 
turret every time than between decks. At that, if 
anything does happen in a turret — it is good night 
sure for all, and no rain checks needed. 

One of our junior lieutenants was struck by a frag- 
ment of shell as he was at his station behind the whee^ 
house, and a piece of his skull was driven into his 
brain. He was carried into my gun turret, but he 
would not let them take him to sick bay to have his 
wound dressed. There he sat, asking every now and 



Hell at Gallipoli 113 

then how the fight was going, and then sort of dozing 
off for a while. 

After about half an hour of action we put about 
and started away, still firing. As a parting slap on 
the back the Turks tore off one of our big gun turrets, 
and then away we went back to Brest with a casualty 
list of only fifteen. We did not have much trouble 
guessing that it was dry dock for us again. 

We reached Brest after a quiet voyage, patching 
ourselves up where we could on the way, and again 
there was the rush work, day and night, to get into 
shape and do it over again. They turned us out in 
twelve days, and back we went to the Turks and 
their Hun assistants. 

We were lucky getting inshore, only receiving a 
nasty smash astern, when the Turks had our range 
and landed two peaches before we got out. We 
nearly tore our rudder off getting away. But we had 
to come back right away, because we had carried 
quite a number of heavy guns from Brest and were 
given the job of running them ashore. It was day 
and night work, and a great job for fun, because, 
while you never knew when you would catch it, you 
had good reason to feel you would get lammed by a 
cute little shell or a dainty bit of shrapnel before the 
job was over. 

Aboard ship it was deck work of course, and it 
was not much better there than ashore with the guns, 
because the enemy trenches were near the shore and 



114 Gunner Depew 

they amused themselves trying to pick us off when- 
ever we showed on deck. I guess we were a regular 
shooting gallery for them, and some of our men 
thought they did not need all the practice they 
were getting, for quite a few of us acted as bulls' 
eyes. 

But we did not mind the bullets so much. They 
make a clean wound or put you away entirely : shrap- 
nel tears you up and can play all kinds of tricks with 
various parts of your body without killing you. As 
for shells — well, mincemeat is the word. 

The Narrows were thick with mines, and a great 
deal of damage had been done there, so after a while 
the British detailed their Yarmouth trawlers to go 
in and sweep up. They had to go unprotected, of 
course, and they started off one night all serene. 

Everything went well until they turned at the 
Narrows and started back. Then, before you could 
tell it, five or six searchlights were playing on one of 
the trawlers, and shells were splashing the water all 
over her. Both banks were simply banging away 
point-blank at them, and I never thought they would 
get back. 

They did, though, but some of them had hardly 
enough men left to work ship. But that is like the 
Limeys. They will get back from anywhere while 
there is one man alive. 

A chap aboard one of the trawlers said a shell 
went through the wheelhouse between the quarter- 



Hell at GallipoH 115 

master and himself, and all the Q.M. said was, 
"Blime, that tickled ! " 

" But I know their shooting was very bad," said 
the other chap to me. " Those Turks must have 
thought the flue was behind them." 

Coming back from the Dardanelles, a gold-stripe 
sent for me and asked me whether I thought there 
were other ex-navj^ gunners in the States who would 
serve with the French. I told him the country was 
full of good gunners, and he wanted me to write to 
all I knew and get them to come over. He did not 
mean by this, and neither do I, that there were not 
good gunners in the French Navy, because there 
were — lots of them. But you can never have too 
many handy boys with the guns, and he was very 
anxious for me to get all I could.'; I had no way of 
reaching the ex-garbies whom I did know, so I had 
to pass on this opportunity to recruit by mail. 

While we were in Brest I got permission to go 
aboard a submarine, and a petty officer showed me 
round. This was the first time I was in the interior 
of a sub., and I told the officer that I would like to 
take a spin in the tub myself. He introduced me 
to the commander, but the petty officer said he did 
not think they would let me stay aboard. I showed 
the commander my passport and talked to him for a 
while, and he said he would take me on their prac- 
tice cruise two days later if the Old Man gave me 
written permission. 



ii6 Gunner Depew 

So I hot-footed it back to the Cassard, and while 
I did not promise that I would get any American 
gunners for him in exchange for the written permis- 
sion, he was free to think that if he wanted to. It 
seems as though he did take it that way, for he gave 
me a note to the sub. commander and sent him an- 
other note by messenger. I wanted Murray to go 
also, but the Old Man said one was enough. 

So, two days later, I went aboard in the morning 
and had breakfast with the sub. crew, and a good 
breakfast it was, too. After breakfast they took 
stations, and the commander went up on the struc- 
ture amidships, which was just under the conning- 
tower, and I squatted down on the deck beneath the 
structure. 

Then the gas engines started up and made an 
awful racket and shook the old tub from stem to 
stern. I could tell that we had cut loose from the 
dock and were moving. After a while they shut 
off the gas engines and started the motors, and we 
began to submerge. When we were all the way 
under I looked tlu-ough the periscope and saw a 
Dutch merchantman. We stayed under about half 
an hour, and then came back to the surface. One 
of the garbles told me later that this same sub. 
had gone out of control a few weeks before and kept 
diving and diving until she struck bottom. I do not 
know how many fathoms down it was, but it was 
farther than any commander would take a sub. if he 



Hell at Gallipoli 117 

could help it. This garby said they could '^hear the 
plates cracking, and it was a wonder that they did 
not crumple up from the pressure, but she weathered 
it, pressure button and all, and in a quarter of an 
hour was on the surface. While on the surface they 
sighted smoke, submerged again, and soon over the 
horizon came eight battleships, escorted by Zepps 
and destroyers. 

They tested their tubes before they got in range. 
Finally they let go. The first shot missed, but after 
that they got into it good, and the garby said all 
you could hear was the knocking of the detonated 
gun-cotton. 

About five minutes later they sighted five de- 
stroyers, two on each bow, and one dead ahead. 
The sub. steered in at right-angle zigzags, and the 
destroyers stayed with their convoy. The sub. 
launched two torpfedoes at less than a mile before 
diving to get away from the destroyers, and the 
garby said at least one of them was hit. These ships 
must have been some of the lucky ones that came 
down from the North Sea. The garby said he 
thought they were off the Dutch coast at the time, 
but he was not sure. 

But this cruise that I was on was only a practice 
cruise, and we did not meet with any excitement in 
the short time that we were out. 



CHAPTER XI 

AT THE DARDANELLES 

While we were in Brest, after the second trip to the 
Dardanelles, the A. & H. liner Kansan, out of Balti- 
more — since torpedoed — and the British tramp Wel- 
beck Hall were lying in the harbour. There were 
many Americans in the crews of each vessel, and I 
went to the Commandant of the port and asked him 
if we could have a baseball game on the drill ground. 

He had heard about baseball — just heard about 
it — and he had the same idea of it as a sport that the 
average Frenchman gets. He said he would be glad 
to oblige, but did not I think it was too dangerous a 
sport for him to give his official sanction to? The 
men used masks and pads and large clubs, he under- 
stood, and threw hard balls at one another. 

I told him that baseball was such a gentle sport 
that the old folks' homes in the States all had teams, 
and that they even plaj^ed it indoors, and that most 
people thought that baseball was the reason Ameri- 
cans were so gentle and lamblike. He said he had 
not heard we were quite as harmless as I made out. 
But he (gave in when I asked him whether he did not 
think fencing was more dangerous than baseball, and 
explained the game to him somewhat. 

ii8 



At the Dardanelles 119 

So we laid out a diamond on the parade ground, 
with rocks for the bases, and a ship's skillet for the 
home plate. Then the French got into it and ar- 
ranged a programme of races, and a fencing match 
between one of their men and a German prisoner. 
The crew of the Kansan practised early one morning, 
and had pickets out so that no one could see them at 
work, but the Welhech Hall men only played catch 
on deck. 

We had a fine day for the game, and a mixed 
crowd out — French, civvies, soldiers, garbies, 
prisoners, the crews of the two ships, and Lord 
knows what. They wanted me to umpire, but I was 
too modest ! So Dow, the first mate of the Kansan, 
was made umpire. He was manager of his team, 
too, but the Welheck Hall men were good sports and 
let it go at that. 

It was an awful game. I do not think that 
anybody knew what the score was, or how many inn- 
ings they played, but after a time almost everybody 
admitted that the Kansan team had won. 

Then they had the fencing, which excited the 
Frenchmen very much, and I must say they are good 
sports, because the German put it all over their man, 
and they did not protest at all, but applauded the 
German and gave him cigarettes enough to stock a 
store. 

After that came the big event. One of the 
Kansan'^s crew was Shorty Mitchell, from Fairfield, 



120 Gunner Depew 

Maine — the same man who shipped on the Virginian 
with us — and he was said to have been light-weight 
champion of the State at one time. The Welheck 
Hall chap was a hid named Mike Sweeney. I do 
not know where he came from, but he was a good 
man with his lists. And the big event was a fight 
between these two. Dow got it up and ref creed the 
bout. 

All during the scrap there was a six-foot Kanaka 
or Hawaiian from tlie Kansaii who kept shouting 
things at Dow and getting closer all the time to the 
ring. Now, Dow was a little fellow, and he had a 
tough bunch to handle. But he was game, if ever 
there was a game man. He always carried a rawhide 
whip with him, and when this Kanaka jumped into 
the ring and swore at him Dow let him have the whip 
right across the face. Some more men got into the 
ring about this time, and there was a riot for a while, 
with Dow cutting and slashing right and left. 
Finally, he got the ring cleared, but Mitchell and 
Sweeney were not in sight. I guess they had had 
enough. 

So the Kanaka climbed back into the ring and 
challenged anybody there to a fight to a finish, bare 
fists or gloves. He certainly was a burly boy, if 
ever there w^as one. Nobody took him up, and he 
kept laughing at the audience, and calling them yel- 
low, and swearing at them generally. I am not 
saying I offered to fight him, but somebody would 



At the Dardanelles 121 

have had to — maybe it might have been me — if Dow 
had not thrown down his whip and put on the gloves. 
The Kanaka was so glad to get a crack at Dow he 
could hardly wait to have the gloves laced on him. 

Then they went to it, and I wish you could have 
seen the beating that black boy took. Dow just 
pasted him all over the place. He would get inside 
the Kanaka's guard and put away a few body blows, 
and then out again, leaving a few on the jaw as 
souvenirs as he went. 

It looked funny, though, for Dow and the 
Kanaka stacked up like Mutt and Jeff for size. The 
black boy was bleeding like a stuck pig at the mouth 
and nose, but he would not yell " Enough! " and 
Dow finally rocked him to sleep with a pile driver on 
the chin. I never saw a prettier fight, because the 
black boy was no clown with his fists himself. But 
Dow was certainly a great httle scrapper and a fine 
sport. 

Also, while we were in dry dock at Brest, I went 
aboard the France IV, one of the eight hospital ships 
that went to and fro between Salonica and Tunis. 
The ship was fitted up to carry about nine hundred 
patients, and I never saw a better equipped hospital' 
anywhere — X-ray apparatus and glass tubes and 
bulbs everywhere. 

The saloon deck and the dining saloon were filled 
with white beds, and the lower decks were fitted up 
with berths. The staterooms — all white — were filled 



122 Gunner Depew 

with surgical dressings, supplies and clothing of 
various kinds. 

There is a priest aboard each of the hospital ships, 
and a picked staff of doctors and nurses. When 
patients arrive on board, their knapsacks are taken 
from them and stored on deck so that there will not 
be any danger of infection below in the wards. 
Then a little card is pinned on each man's bed coat, 
telling where he is wounded or what disease he has. 
Those who can walk, even on crutches, are allowed on 
deck as much as they please in fair weather, and they 
gather around on the forecastle deck or amidships, 
out of the wind, and compare wounds and talk symp- 
toms just like any other batch of sanatorium patients. 
Each man has his own water-bottle and drinking 
cup . 

Of course, some of them die at sea, and these are 
rolled up in a tarpaulin, sewed, w^eighted — ^then, over 
the side, after the priest has read the service. I 
guess it is good for the patients who can walk to be 
out in the air on deck, but I wondered what the lads 
on crutches would do in a heavy sea. It must take 
some hobbling to keep up. 

I made twelve trips to the Dardanelles in all, 
the Cassard acting generally as convoy to troop ships ; 
but one trip was much like another, and I cannot 
remember all the details, so I will give only certain 
incidents of the voyages that you might find inter- 
esting. We never put into the Dardanelles without 



At the Dardanelles 123 

being under fire — but besides saying so, what is there 
to write about in that ? It was interesting enough at 
the time, though, you can take it from me ! 

Coming up to " V " Beach on our third trip to 
the Dardanelles, the weather was as nasty as any I 
have ever seen. The rain was sweeping along in 
sheets — great big drops, and driven by the wind in 
regular volleys. You could see the wind coming, 
by the line of white against a swell where the drops 
hit. 

As we rounded the point the seas got choppier, 
and there were cross-currents bucking the ship from 
every angle, it seemed. You could not see two 
hundred yards away, the rain was so thick, and the 
combers were breaking over our bows three a minute. 
The coast here is pretty dangerous, so we went in 
very slowly, and had the sounding-line going until 
its whir-r-r-r sounded louder than a machine-gun in 
action. 

I was on the starboard bow at the time, and had 
turned to watch some garbies poking at the scuppers 
to drain the water off the deck. But the scuppers 
had been plugged, and they were having a hard time 
of it. The officer on the bridge, in oilskins, was 
walking up and down, wiping off the business end 
of his telescope, and trying to dodge the rain. All 
of the garbies but one left the scuppers on the star- 
board side and started across decks to port. The 
other chap kept on fooling around the scuppers. 



124 Gunner Depew 

Then I saw a big wave coming for us, just off the 
stai^board bow, and I grabbed hold of a stanchion and 
took a deep breath and held on. When my head 
showed above water again the other end of the wave 
was just passing over the place where the garbies had 
been, and the officer was shouting : " Un homme a 
la mer ! " He shouted before the man really was 
overboard because he saw that the wave would get 
him. 

I rushed to the port bow and looked back, for the 
wave had carried him clear across the decks, and saw 
the poor lad in the water trying to fend himself off 
from the ship's side. But it was no go, and the port 
propeller blades just carved him into bits. 

On our homeward voyage we received word 
again, by wireless, that there were Zeppelins at sea. 
We did not believe this, and it proved to be untrue. 
But there were other stories, and taller ones, told 
us by one of the wireless operators that some of the 
garbies beheved. This chap was the real original 
Baron Munchausen when it came to yarning, and for 
a while he had me going, too. He would whisper 
some startling tale to us and make us promise not 
to tell, as he had picked it from some other ship's 
message, and the Old Man would spread-eagle him 
if he found it out. They probably would have 
logged him, at that, if they had known he was filling 
us full of wind the way he did. 

He told me one time that Henry Ford had in- 



At the Dardanelles 125 

vented something or other for locating subs, miles 
away, and also another device that would draw the 
sub. right up to it and swallow it whole. He had a 
lot of other yarns that I cannot remember, but I 
did not believe him because I saw he was picking out 
certain men to tell certain yarns to — that is, spin- 
ning them where they would be more sure of being 
believed, and not just spinning them anywhere. 

So I got pretty tired of his stuff after a while, 
and when we put out from Brest, on the fourth 
voyage, I got this fellow on deck in rough weather, 
and began talking to him about the chap who had 
gone overboard the time before and had been cut 
up by the propeller. I pretended that, of course, 
he knew all about it — that the Old Man had had this 
garby pushed overboard because he was too free 
with his mouth. But this did not seem to do any 
good, so I had to think up another way. 

When we were out two days I got hold of our 
prize liar again. I reasoned that he would be super- 
stitious, and I was right. I said that, of course, he 
knew that a ship could not draw near Cape Helles 
and get away again unless at least one man was lost, 
or that, if it did get away, there would be many 
casualties aboard. I said it had always been that 
way, and claimed that the Old Man had pushed 
the garby overboard because someone had to go. I 
said on our other trips no one had been sacrificed, 
and that was the reason we had suffered so much, 



126 Gunner Depew 

and that the Old Man had been taken to task by the 
French Minister of the Navy. I told him that the 
Old Man would pick on whatever garby he thought 
he could best spare. 

That was all I had to tell him. Either he 
thought the Old Man knew of his yarning, or else 
he did not think himself of much account, for he 
disappeared that very watch, and we did not see him 
again until we were on the homeward voyage, and a 
steward happened to dig into a provision hold. 
There was our lying friend with a lifebelt on, an- 
other under his head, and the bight of a rope round 
his waist, fast asleep. Why he had the rope I do 
not know, but he was scared to death and thought 
we were going to chuck him overboard at once. I 
think he must have told the officers everything be- 
cause I noticed them looking pretty hard at me — or, 
at least, I thought I did ; maybe it was my con- 
science, if I may brag of having one — and I thought 
one of our lieutenants was just about to grin at me 
several times, but we never heard any more about 
it, or any more yarns from our wireless friend. 

The fourth voyage was pretty rough, too. The 
old girl would stick her nose into the seas, and many 
times I thought she would forget to come up. We 
had a lot of sand piled up against the wheelhouse, 
and after we dived pretty deep one time, and bucked 
out slowly, there was not a grain of sand left. It 
looked as if the sea was just kidding us, for we were 



At the Dardanelles 127 

almost into quiet water, and here it had just taken 
one sea aboard to clean up the sand we had carried 
all the way from Brest. 

During the whole voyage you could not get near 
the galley, which was where our wireless friend hung 
out when he could. The pans and dixies on the wall 
stood straight out when the ship pitched, and several 
heavy ones came down on a cook's head while he was 
sitting under them during a very heavy sea. That 
made him sviperstitious, too, and he disappeared and 
was not found for two days. But he was a landsman 
and not used to heavy weather. 

When we got to the Gallipoli Peninsula the fifth 
time our battle fleet and transports lay off the Straits. 
We could not reach the little harbour on the Turkish 
coast, but the whole fleet felt happy and fairly con- 
fident of victory. We lay off Cape Helles, and it 
was there we received the news that submarines were 
lying round Gibraltar. Then they were reported off 
Malta. We got the news from British trawlers and 
transports. Our officers said the subs, could not 
reach the DardaneUes without putting in somewhere 
for a fresh supply of fuel, and that the Allied fleets 
were on the look-out at every place where the subs, 
might try to put in. But they got there just the 
same. 

Then the British super-dreadnought Queen 
Elizabeth, "The Terror of the Turks," came in. 
She left England with a whole fleet of cruisers and 



128 Gunner Depew 

destroyers, and all the Limeys said: "She'll get 
through. Nothing will stop her." 

One of the boys aboard her told me he had no 
idea the Dardanelles would be as hot a place as he 
found it was. " Blime," he said, " what with dodg- 
ing shells and submarines, you cawn't 'elp but run on 
to a bloomin' mine! Hi don't mind tellin' you," 
he said, " that Hi was scared cold at first. And 
then Hi thinks of what 'Oly Joe [the chaplain] told 
us one service. ' Hin times of dynger look hup- 
wards,' 'e says. So Hi looks hup wards, and, blime, 
hif there wasn't a bally 'plane a-droppin' bombs hon 
us! 'What price hup ward looks, 'Oly Joe?' I 
sings out, but he weren't nowheres near. Blarst me, 
there weren't nowhere you could look without doin' 
yer bloomin' heye a dirty trick." 

When the Queen Elizabeth entered the Dar- 
danelles the Turkish batteries on both shores opened 
right on her. They had ideal positions, and they 
were banging away in great style. And the water 
was simply thick with mines, and, for all anybody 
knew, with subs. 

Yet the old Lizzie just sailed right along with 
her band upon the main deck playing, " Everybody's 
Doing It." It made you feel shivery down the 
spine, and, believe me, they got a great hand from 
the whole fleet. 

They say her Old Man told the boys he was going 
to drive right ahead, and that if the ship was sunk 



At the Dardanelles 129 

he would know that the enemy was somewhere in the 
vicinity. Well, they were headed right, but they 
never got past the Narrows. They stuck until the 
last minute, though, and those who went up, went 
up with the right spirit. " Are we downhearted? " 
they would yell. "No!" And they were not, 
either. They did not brag when they gave the 
Turks beans, and they did not grouch when they saw 
that their Red Caps had made mistakes. Their 
motto was, "Try Again," and they tried day after 
day. I do not know much about the history of 
armies, but I do not believe there ever was an army 
like that of the Alhes in the Gallipoli campaign, and 
I do not think any other army could have done what 
they did. I take off my hat to the British Army 
and Navy after that. 

It was hotter than I have ever known it to be 
elsewhere, and there was no water for the boys ashore 
but what the navy brought to them — sometimes a 
pint a day, and often none at all. The Turks had 
positions that you could not expect any army to take ; 
were well supplied with ammunition, and were used 
to the country and climate. Most of the British 
Army were green troops. It was the Anzacs' first 
campaign. 

They were wonderful boys, those Australians and 
New Zealanders. Great big men, all of them, and 
finely built, and they fought hke devils. It was 
hand-to-hand work half the time ; hardly any sleep, 



130 Gunner Depew 

no water, sometimes no food. They made a mark 
there at GalUpoU that the world will have to go some 
to beat. 

Our boys were on the job, too. We held our 
part of the works until the time came for everybody 
to quit, and it was no picnic. The French should 
be very proud of the work their navy did in the 
Dardanelles. 

On our sixth trip I saw H.M.S. Goliath get it. 
She was struck three times by torpedoes and then 
shelled. The men were floundering in the water with 
shrapnel cutting the waves all round them. Only a 
hundred odd of her crew were saved. 

One day off Cape Helles, during our seventh 
spell at the Dardanelles, we sighted a sub. periscope 
just about dinner-time. The Prince George and a 
destroyer sighted the sub. at the same time, and the 
Prince George let go two rounds before the periscope 
disappeared, but did not hit the mark. Transports, 
battleships and cruisers were thick around there, all 
at anchor, and it was a great place for a sub. to be. 

In no time at all the destroyers breezed out with 
their tails in the air, throwing a smoke screen round 
the larger ships. They hunted high and low all over 
the spot where she had been sighted and all around 
it, thinking to ram it or bring it to the surface so we 
could take a crack at it. All the rest of the fleet — 
battleships and transports — weighed anchor at once 
and steamed ahead at full speed. 



At the Dardanelles 131 

It was a great sight. Any new ship coming up 
would have thought that the British and French 
navies had gone crazy. We did not have any fixed 
course, but were steaming as fast as we could in circles 
and half circles, and dashing madly from port to star- 
board. We were not going to allow that sub. to 
get a straight shot at us, but we almost rammed our- 
selves doing it. It was a case of chase-tail for every 
ship in the fleet. 

But the sub. did not show itself again that day, 
and we anchored again. That night, while the 
destroyers were around the ships, we slipped our 
cables and patrolled the coast along the Australian 
position at Gaba Tepe, but we did not anchor. 

The following day the Albion went ashore in the 
fog, soutli of Gaba Tepe, and as soon as the fog 
lifted the Turks let loose and gave it to her hot. A 
Turkish ship came up and, with any kind of gunnery, 
could have raked her fore and aft, but the Turks 
must have been pretty shy of gun sense, for they only 
got in one hit before they were driven off by H. M.S. 
Canopus, which has made such a fine record in this 
war. 

Then the Canopus pulled in close to the Albion, 
got a wire hawser aboard, and attempted to tow her 
out under a heavy fire, but as soon as she started 
pulling the cable snapped. The crew of the Albion 
were ordered aft, and jumped upon the quarter deck 
to try to shift the bow off the bank. At the same 



132 Gunner Depew 

time the fore turret and the fore 6-inch guns opened 
up a hot fire on the Turkish positions, to Hghten the 
ship and shift her by the concussions of the guns. 
For a long time they could not budge her. Then 
the Canopus got another hawser aboard, and with 
guns going and the crew jumping and the Canopus 
pulling, the old Albion finally slid off, and both ships 
backed into deep water with little harm done to 
either. Then they returned to their old anchorages. 

At Cape Helles everyone was wide awake. We 
were all on the look-out for subs., and you could not 
find one man napping. Anything at all passed for 
a periscope— tins, barrels, spars. Dead horses gener- 
ally float in the water with one foot sticking up, and 
we gave the alarm many a time when it was only 
some old nag on his way to Davy Jones's Locker. 

On the Cassard the Old Man posted a reward of 
fifty francs for the first man who sighted a periscope. 
This was a good idea, but, believe me, he would 
have had trouble in making the award, for every man 
on the ship would be sure to see it at the same time. 
We were all on deck all the time. Each man felt 
sure he would be the man to get the reward. The 
14-pounders were loaded and ready for action at a 
second's notice. But the reward was never claimed. 

During our eighth trip off Cape Helles I was 
amidships in the galley when I heard our two 
14-pounders go off almost at the same time. Every- 
body ran for his station. Going up the main deck to 



At the Dardanelles 133 

my turret a man told me it was a sub. on the port 
bow, but I only caught a glimpse of the little whirl- 
pool where her periscope submerged. I do not know 
why she did not let loose a torpedo at us. The 
officers said she was trying to make the entrance to 
the Dardanelles, and came up blind among the ships 
and was scared off by our guns, but I thought we had 
just escaped by the skin of our teeth. Later, our 
destroyers claimed to have sighted her off Gaba Tepe. 

It was probably the same sub. that launched a 
torpedo at H.'M.S. Vengeance^ but missed her. The 
Vengeance was cruising at the time. 

At noon we were at mess when one of the boys 
yelled, " She's hit," and we all rushed on deck. 
There was the British ship Triumph torpedoed and 
listing to starboard. She was ready to turn over in a 
few minutes. One battleship is not supposed to go 
to the assistance of another one that has been tor- 
pedoed, because the chances are the sub. is still in 
the neighbourhood, lying for the second ship with 
another torpedo. But one of the British trawlers 
went to the assistance of the Triumph to pick up the 
crew. 

We could see the crew jumping into the water. 
Then we breezed out towards the horizon full speed 
ahead. All about the Triumph was a cloud of black 
smoke, but when we looked through the glasses we 
could see she was going down. Then our guns 
began to bombard the Turkish positions, and I had 



134 Gunner Depew 

to get busy. When I saw the Triumph again she 
was bottom up. She must have floated upside down 
for ahnost half an hour ; then she went under as 
though there were somebody on the bottom pulUng 
her. 

When she went our Old Man banged his tele- 
scope on the bridge-rail, and swore at the Huns and 
Turks and broke his telescope lens to bits. About 
fifty from the Triuviph were lost. 

It was decided that the place was too hot for us 
with that sub. running loose, and when they re- 
ported, that afternoon, that she was making her way 
south from Gaba Tepe to Cape Helles, all of the fleet 
but the Majestic got under way, and the Majestic 
was the only ship left off the Cape. 

They said the Majestic was then the oldest of the 
ships in that campaign, but she was the pride of the 
British fleet just the same. She was torpedoed off 
Cape Helles later, when there were a number of 
men-of-war off the Cape. The sea was crowded with 
men, swimming and drowning. I saw a life-boat 
crowded with men and so many others hanging to her 
that they began to pull her under. Of their oAvn 
accord the men in the water let go to save those in 
the boat. Most of them were drowned. 

The Majestic listed so that the men could not 
stand on deck, and the sides were covered with men 
hanging on to ropes, and not knowing whether to 
jump into the sea or not. We lowered all our life- 



At the Dardanelles 135 

boats and steam launches, and so did the other ships. 
We picked up a number of the crew and were pretty 
close to the Majestic when she went down hke a rock. 
As she went down she turned over, and a garby ram 
along her side to the ram at her bow and got on it 
without even being wet. A boat picked him up off 
the ram, which stuck out of the water after the ship 
had ceased to settle. 

She had torpedo nets on her sides, and many of 
the crew were unable to get clear of the nets, and 
went down with her. Quite a lot were caught below 
decks, and had no possible chance to escape. There 
was a big explosion as she went under — probably the 
boilers bursting. Thousands of troops on shore and 
thousands of sailors on the ships saw the final plunge, 
and it was a sight to remember. When the ship 
started to go the Old Man rushed back to his cabin, 
got the signal book and destroyed it. Also, he saved 
the lives of two of his men. 

We gave dry clothes and brandy and coffee to the 
Limeys we rescued, and though they had just come 
through something pretty tough they were very calm 
and cool, and started talking right away about what 
ships they would probably be assigned to next. 



CHAPTER XII 

A PAL CRUCIFIED 

AVhen we got to " V " Beach on my next trip the 
weather was really fine, but it did not please us much, 
for as soon as we got in range the enemy batteries 
opened upon us, and the shell fire was heavier than 
any we had been in before, though not more effec- 
tive. We drew in on a bright morning about half- 
past five or six with our convoy, the troopship Cham- 
pagne ahead of us, and going slowly, sounding all 
the way. 

At this part of the shore there is a dock about a 
mile and a half long, running back into the country 
and terminating in a road. The Champagne was 
making for this dock, sounding as she went. Sud- 
denly, when she was within five hundred yards of the 
shore, I saw her swing round and steer in a crazy 
fashion. We began asking each other what the 
devil was the matter with her, but we learned after- 
wards that her rudder had been torn off, though we 
never found out how, nor do I think anyone ever 
knew. 

Then she went aground, with her stern towards 
the shore, and listed over to port. You could see 

136 



A Pal Crucified 137 

different articles rolling out and down the side. 
Then her back broke. The quarter-deck was 
crowded with men half dressed, with lifebelts on, 
jumping over the side or climbing down. There was 
an explosion, and a cloud of black smoke broke over 
us, and for a while I thought I was blinded. 

All the time the shells were raining in on us and 
on the Champagne. When I could see again I saw 
the men on the Champagne climbing down the star- 
board, or shore side. One chap was going down, 
hand over hand, along a stanchion, when an- 
other fellow above him let go and slid right down on 
him. The first man fell about thirty feet, 
landing in the water with his neck doubled under 
him. Our lifeboats and launches were out picking 
up survivors. 

Those who got safely over the side started to swim 
ashore, birt when they had gone only a httle way 
they found they could wade in. When the water 
was only up to their waists they came upon barbed 
wire entanglements, and not a man got ashore that 
way but was scratched and clawed and mangled hor- 
ribly. Some of them that I saw afterwards were 
just shredded along the sides of their bodies like 
coco-nuts. A great many of them, though, were 
killed by shrapnel while they were in the water. 

On board the Cassard our guns had been busy all 
the time, and it was not long before we put one 
enemy battery out of commission. We had suf- 
j 



138 Gunner Depew 

fered a bit, too, but not enougli to worry us. There 
were about 3,000 men on the Champagne, I think. 
The ship was just a mass of wreckage. 

They called for a landing party from the Cassard, 
and officers asked for volunteers for trench duty. I 
was not very keen about going, because I had been 
in trenches at Dixmude, and I knew how pleasant 
thej^ were — ^but I volunteered, and so did Murray. 
We went ashore in our boats under a heavy fire. 
Twelve men were killed in the lifeboat in which I 
was. I escaped without a scratch. 

We were mustered up on shore and volunteers 
were called for for sentry duty. Murray volun- 
teered. If he had only gone on with the rest of us 
he might have come through. After a short wait 
we were given the order to advance. The firing be- 
came heavier about this time, so we went at the 
double. We had not gone very far before we had a 
gruesome surprise. 

The front line was running over what appeared 
to be good solid ground when they broke through 
and fell into trenches thirty to forty feet deep. These 
trenches had been dug, covered over with ^-inch 
boards and then with dirt, and were regular man- 
traps. Sharp stakes were sticking out of the parapet 
and parados, and at the bottom were more stakes and 
rocks and barbed wire. 

We were advancing with bayonets fixed and arms 
at the carry, so, when the first line fell, and some of 



A Pal Crucified 139 

the second, the boys of the third line came running 
up, and in the scramble that followed, many of the 
chaps in the first two lines were bayoneted by their 
comrades. I w^as in the third line, but I was lucky 
enough to pull up in time and did not fall in. You 
could not look down into that trench after you had 
seen it once ; it was too sickening. Our casualties 
were sent back to the ship. One boat was sunk by 
a shell and all the men were lost. 

We remained where we were, scratching out shal- 
low trenches for ourselves, finding what natural cover 
there was, and otherwise getting ready for the night, 
which was near. It began to rain and we could 
hardly keep any fires going, because we had to shel- 
ter them from the shore side, so that the enemy 
might not spot us, and the wind was from the sea. 
It was certainly miserable that night. 

Every now and then we would stand by to repel 
an attack, whether it was a real one or not, and we 
were under fire all the time. It seemed as if morn- 
ing would never come. The sand was full of fleas — 
great big boys — and they were as bad as any cooties 
I have ever had in Dixmude. 

The morning came at last, and I was detailed 
with a fatigue party to go to the beach where we had 
landed stores. When we got down to the docks I 
missed Murray and asked where he was. They said 
he had been missing from his post not more than an 
hour from the time we started. 



140 Gunner Depew 

I left my fatigue party, without orders, and 
joined in the hunt for Murray. There were men 
searching all along the docks and on the shore to 
each side. Finally, I saw a number of men collect 
round a storehouse at the farther end of the docks, on 
the shore side. I ran up to them. 

There was poor old Murray. They were just 
taking him down. He had been crucified against 
the wall of the storehouse. There was a bayonet 
through each arm, one through each foot, and one 
through his stomach. One of the garbies fainted 
when he had to pull one of the bayonets out. They 
had hacked off his right hand at the wrist, and taken 
his identification disc. I lay this to the German 
officers more than to the Turks. 

I do not know just what I did after this. But 
it changed me all through, and I was not like my 
usual self during the rest of the time. 

It was still raining when we started on our way 
to the front line. Along the road were numbers of 
troops feeding, and among them Indian troops on 
sentry duty. They looked like a bunch of frozen 
turnips, cool and uncomfortable. We were close 
enough to make the roar of the cannonading seem 
intolerably loud, and could see the bursting shells, 
particularly those from the British ships. 

Then we came across some Turkish prisoners who 
were sheltering in an old barn, I guess it was, and we 
stopped for shelter and rest. They told us that their 



A Pal Crucified 141 

troops were very tired from long fighting, but that 
they had plenty of men. They said a couple of shells 
had dropped about a hundred yards from the barn just 
before we came, so we knew the batteries were trying 
to get our range, and we did not stay any longer, but 
went away from there and on our road. 

About 500 yards farther on we came to some 
ruins, and when we went inside we found fifty or 
sixty of our boys cooking and sleeping and not giving 
a thought to the shells or shrapnel. The mules out- 
side were tearing away at the hay as though there 
never had been a war in the world. There was no 
shell made that could make them budge from that 
hay unless it hit them. 

Then along came a cart making a lot of racket. 
One of the fellows in it had half of his face shot away 
and was all bandaged up, but he was trying to sing 
and laugh just as the rest were doing. They were 
Anzacs and were pretty badly shot up. 

The word " Anzac," as you know, is made from 
the initials of the Australian and New Zealand Army 
Corps. They had a regular town called Anzac on 
the Peninsula. At Suvla Bay and around Gaba 
Tepe the Anzacs got farther into the Turkish lines 
than any other unit of the Allied armies. They 
were wonderful fighters. 

By this time the Turks were making an attack, 
and all you could see to the front was one long line 
of smoke and spouting earth. Then our guns 



142 Gunner Depew 

started, and the noise was deafening. It was worse 
than in the turrets aboard ship during an engage- 
ment. My head rang for days after we left the 
Dardanelles. 

By and by the Turks got a better idea of our 
range, and the shells were falling pretty close to us, 
but finally we tore in with the 14-inch navals and 
ripped up three of their batteries. In the lull that 
followed we made good time and reached our front- 
line positions at Sedd-el-Bahr during the afternoon. 

Next morning we made our first attack. I had 
had a bad night, thinking about Murray, and when 
the time came there never was a chap more glad to 
charge and get a chance at the enemy with a bayonet 
than I was. 

We attacked according to a regular programme. 
Time cards were issued to the officer of each section 
so that we should work exactly with the barrage. To 
be ahead of, or behind the time card would mean 
walking into our own barrage. The time of attack 
is called Zero — that is the minute when you leave 
the trench. Some of the Anzacs said it meant when 
your feet got the coldest, but I do not think they suf- 
fered very much with trouble in the feet — not when 
they were advancing, anyway. 

The time card might read something like this : 
First Wave, Zero, advance, rapid walk, barrage 
twenty-five in ten seconds, take first trench, 0:20; 
second w^ave, same as the first, pass first trench. 



A Pal Crucified 143 

:23, take second trench, :35. The third wave is 
ordered to take the third trench, and so on, for as 
many lines as the enemy is entrenched. The other 
waves might be instructed to occupy Hill 7, 12 :08, 
or dig in behind rock, 12 :45. Here Zero is under- 
stood, the first figures standing for minutes and the 
others for seconds. It might take several hours to 
carry out the programme, but everything is laid out 
to an exact schedule. 

I was in the sixth line of the third wave of attack, 
and Zero was 4.30 a.m. Whistles were to be the 
signal for Zero, and we were to walk to the first-line 
Turkish trench. As we came out our barrage fire 
would be bursting fifty yards ahead of us, and would 
lift twenty-five yards every ten seconds. Our stunt 
was to take advantage of it without walking into it. 

No one man can see all of an attack, which may 
extend over miles of ground, but during the three 
weeks I was in the trenches on the Gallipoli Penin- 
sula we made four grand attacks and many minor 
ones, so I know in a general way what they are Hke. 
Each wave is organised like the others. First come 
three lines of what you might call grenadiers, though 
they are not picked for size as the old King's 
Grenadiers used to be. They are deployed in skir- 
mish formation, which means that every man is three 
yards from the next. They are armed only with 
grenades, but, you can take it from me, that is 
enough ! Behind them come two lines, also in skir- 



144 Gunner Depew 

mish formation, and armed with machine-guns and 
grenade rifles. The first men on the left carry 
machine-guns, then come three rifle grenadiers, and 
then another machine-gun, and so on down the 
length of the line. After these come two lines of 
, riflemen with fixed bayonets. 

Then come the trench cleaners, or moppers-up, 
as we called them. They were some gang, believe 
me. Imagine a team of Rugby players spread out 
in two lines — only with hundreds of men in the team 
instead of eleven, and each man a Samson, capable 
of handling a baby grand piano single-handed. 
These fellows were armed with everything you could 
think of, and a whole lot more that you could not 
dream about in a nightmare. It used to remind me 
of a trial I saw in New York once, where the police 
had raided a thieves' den and had all their weapons 
in the courtroom as exhibits. 

The moppers-up were armed with sticks, clubs, 
shillelaghs, black-jacks, two-handed cleavers, axes, 
trench knives, poniards, up-to-date tomahawks, 
brass knuckle-dusters, slung shots — anything that was 
ever invented for crashing a man with, I guess, except 
firearms. These knock-down-drag-out artists follow 
the riflemen very closely. Their job was to take care 
of all the Turks who could not escape and would not 
surrender. 

There are lots of men in any army who will not 
surrender, but I think probably there were more 



A Pal Crucified 145 

Turks of that gameness than men in most other 
armies. I have heard that it is part of their rehgion 
that a man, if he dies fighting, goes to a very 
specially fancy heaven, with plenty to eat and smoke. 
And I suppose if he surrenders, they believe he will 
be put in the black gang, stoking for eternity down 
below. It was awfully hot at the Dardanelles, and 
I guess the Turks did not want it any hotter, for very 
few of them ever surrendered, and the trench 
cleaners had a lot to do. Their job is really import- 
ant, for it is dangerous to have groups of the enemj^ 
alive and kicking about in their trenches after you 
have passed. Almost every prisoner we took was 
wounded. 

The one thing that I do not like to have people 
ask me is, " How does it feel to kill a man? " and I 
think the other boys feel as I do about it. It is not 
a thing you like to talk about, or think about either. 
But this time at " V " Beach, when we got past the 
first and second Turk trenches and were at work on 
the third, I do not mind saying that I was glad when- 
ever I slipped my bayonet into a Turk, and more 
glad when I saw another one coming. I guess I saw 
red all right. Each time I thought, "Maybe you 
are the one who did for poor old Murray." And I 
could see Murray as he looked when they took him 
down from the storehouse wall. Then I would stick 
another one. 

The others from the Cassard were red-hot, too, 



146 Gunner Depew 

and they went at the Turks in great style. There 
was nothing to complain about in the way they 
fought, but I wished that we had had a few more 
boys from the Foreign Legion with us. I think 
we would have gone clear through to Constantinople. 

But the Turks were not as bad as Fritz. They 
were just as good or better as fighters, and a whole 
lot whiter. Often, when we were frying in the 
trenches and not a drop of water was to be had, 
something would land on the ground near us and 
there would be a water-bottle full. Sometimes they 
almost bombarded us with bottles. Then, too, they 
would not fire on the Red Cross as the Germans do : 
they often held their fire when we were out picking 
up our wounded. Several times they dragged our 
wounded as close as they could to the barbed wire 
that we might find them easier. 

After Murray died I got to thinking a lot more 
than I used to, and though I did not have any pre- 
sentiment exactly, still I felt as though I might " get 
it," too, which was something I had never thought 
much about before. I used to think about my 
grandmother also, when I had time, and about Brown. 
I used to wonder what Brown was doing and wish we 
were together. But I could remember my grand- 
mother smiling, and that helped some. I guess I 
was lonely, to tell the truth. I did not know the 
other garbies well, and the only one left that I was 
really very friendly with got his soon afterwards, 



A Pal Crucified 147 

though not as bad as Murray. And then there was 
no one that I was really chummy with. That would 
not have bothered me at all before Murray died. 

The other lad I was chummy with was named 
Philippe Pierre. He was about eighteen and came 
from Bordeaux. He was a very cheerful fellow, and 
he and Murray and I used to be together a lot. He 
felt almost as bad about Murray as I did, and you 
could see that it changed him a great deal, too. But 
he was still cheerful most of the time. 



CHAPTER XIII 

LIMEYS, ANZACS, AND POILUS 

One night, wliile we were expecting to attack, the 
w^ord was passed down the hne to have the wire- 
cutters ready, and to use bayonets only for the first 
part of the attack, for we were to try to take the 
first enemy trench by surprise. The first trench was 
only about eighty yards away. Our big guns opened 
up, and at Zero we climbed out and followed the 
curtain of fire, too closely, it seemed to me. 

But the barrage stopped too soon, as it does 
sometimes, and there were plenty of Turks left. We 
were half-way across when they saw us, and they 
began pounding away at us very hard. They pounded 
at us as we came on until we were given the order to 
retire, almost as we were on them — what was left 
of us. 

As we turned and started back the Turks ruslied 
out to counter-attack us, the first of them busy with 
bombs. Then I tripped over something and rolled 
round a while, and then saw it was Phihppe Pierre. 
His left leg was dangling, cloth and flesh and all shot 
away, and the leg hanging to the rest of him by a 
shred. Tw^o or three of our men, who were on their 

148 



Limeys, Anzacs and Poilus 149 

way back to our trenches, tripped over me as I tried 
to get up, and then a shell exploded near by, and I 
thought I had got it sure, but it was only the rocks 
thrown up by the explosion. 

Finally, I was able to stand up. So I slung my 
rifle over one shoulder and got Philippe Pierre upon 
the other, with his body from the waist up hanging 
over my back, so that I could hold his wounded leg- 
on, and started back. There were only one or two 
of our men left between the trenches. Our machine- 
guns were at it hard, and the Turks were firing and 
bombing at full speed. 

I had not gone more than two or three paces 
when I came across another of our men, wounded in 
several places, and groaning away at a great rate. 
Philippe Pierre was not saying a word, but the other 
chap did enough for the two of them . One wounded 
man was all I could manage, with my rifle and pack, 
over the rough ground and the barbed wire I had to 
go through. So I told this fellow, whose name I 
cannot remember — I never did know him very well 
— that I would come back for him, and went on. I 
almost fell several times, but managed to get through 
safely and rolled over our parapet with Philippe 
Pierre. They started the lad back in a stretcher 
right away. When I saw him again he gave me a 
little box as a souvenir, but I have lost it. 

The Turks had not got veiy far with their coun- 
ter-attack, because we were able to get our barrage 



150 Gunner Depew 

going in time to check them. But they were 
still out in front of their trenches when I 
started back after the other garby. I was not 
exactly afraid as I crawled along searching for 
my man, but I was very thirsty and nervous for 
fear our barrage would begin again or the machine- 
guns cut loose. After what seemed a long time I 
came upon a wounded man, but he was not the one 
I was after. I thought about a bird in the hand, 
and was just starting to pick this chap up when 
a shell burst almost on us and knocked me two or 
three feet away. It is a wonder it did not kill both 
of us, but neither of us was hurt. I thought the 
fire would get heavier then, so I dragged the other 
chap into one of two holes made by the shell. Some 
pieces of the shell had stuck into the dirt in the hole, 
and they were still hot. Also, there was a sort of 
gas there that hung around for several minutes, but 
it was not very bad. 

The man began talking to me, and he said it was 
an honour to lie on the field of battle witli a leg shot ofi:' 
and dead men piled all about you, and some not dead 
but groaning. He told me I would soon be able to 
bear the groaning, though I had not said I minded 
it, or anything about it. Then he said again what 
an honour it w^as, and asked if I had a drink for him. 
I had not had any water all day, and I told him so, 
but he kept on asking for it all the same. Some of 
the Turkish bombers must have sneaked up pretty 



Limeys, Anzacs and Poilus 151 

close to our lines, for when I looked out of the hole 
towards our line, and a shell burst near them, I could 
see a Turk coming towards us. We played dead 
then, but I had my bayonet ready for him in case 
he had seen us and should decide to come up to the 
hole. Evidently he had not, for when he got near 
the hole, he steered to the side and went round. 

The other garby was cheerful when he was not 
asking for water, but you could see he was going 
fast. So we sat there in the hole, and he died. 
Shortly afterwards the fire slackened a little, and I 
got out and started towards our lines. But I re- 
membered about the other wounded man I had 
passed when I was carrying Philippe Pierre, so I 
begun hunting for him, and after a long time I 
found him. He was still alive. His chest was all 
smashed in and he was badly cut up about the neck 
and shoulders. I picked him up and started back, 
but ran into some barbed wire and had to go round. 
I was pretty tired by this time and awfully thirsty, 
and I thought if I did not rest a little bit I could 
never win through. I was so tired and nervous that 
I did not care much whether I did get back or not, 
and the wounded garby was groaning all the time. 

So when I thought the shells were coming pretty 
thick again I got into a shell-hole, and it was the 
same one I had left not long before. The dead 
garby was there just as I had left him. 

The wounded one was bleeding all over, and my 



152 Gunner Depew 

clothes were soaked with blood from the three men, 
but most of all from him. There was some of my 
own blood on me, too, for when I was knocked down 
by the shell my nose bled, and kept on bleeding for a 
long time, but, of course, that was nothing compared 
wi'tli the bleeding of the others. 

The worst of all was that he kept groaning for 
water, and it made me thirstier than I had been, 
even. But there was not a drop of water anywhere, 
and I knew it w^as no use searching any bodies 
for flasks. So we just had to stick it out. Pretty 
soon the wounded man quit groaning and was quiet, 
and I knew he was going to die, too. It made me 
mad to think that I had not been of any help in 
carrying these two men, but if I had gone on with 
either of them it would have been just the same — 
they would have died, and probably I would have got 
it, too. When I argued it out this way, I quit 
worrying about it, only I wished the fire would 
let up. 

So the other man died, and there were two of 
them in the hole. I read the numbers on their iden- 
tificaltion discs when shells burst near enough so that 
I could see them, and, after a while, I got back to 
our Hues and rolled in. I could not remember the 
numbers or the names by that time, but a working 
party got them, along with others, so it was all right. 
My clothes were a mess, as I have said, and I was 
so tired I thought I could sleep for a week, but I 



Limeys, Anzacs and Poilus 153 

could not stand it in my clothes any longer. It was 
absolutely against regulations, but I took off all my 
clothes — ^the blood had soaked through to the skin — 
and wrapped myself in nothing but air and went 
right to sleep. I did not sleep very well, but woke 
up every now and then and thought I was in the hole 
again. 

During the night they brought up water, but I 
was asleep and did not know it. They did not wake 
me, but two men saved my share for me, though 
usually in a case like that it was everybody for him- 
self and let the last man go dry. You could not 
blame them, either, so I thought it was pretty decent 
of these two to save my share for me. I believe they 
must have had a hard time keeping the others off it, 
to say nothing of themselves, for there really w^as not 
more than enough for one good drink all round. It 
tasted better than anything I have ever drunk. Go 
dry for twenty-four hours in the hottest weather you 
can find, do a night's work such as I have described, 
and come to in the morning with a tin cup full of 
muddy water being handed to you, and you will 
know what I mean and what nectar means. 

At Gaba Tepe there were steep little hills, with 
quarries in between them, and most of the prisoners 
we took were caught in the quarries. We found lots 
of dead Turks under piles of rock, where our guns 
had battered the walls of the quarries down on them. 

We were fighting about this part of the country 

K 



154 Gunner Depew 

one time when we saw three motor trucks disappear 
over the side of a hill going across country. The 
detachment from the Cassard was sent over on the 
run, and we came upon the Turks from those trucks 
and several others just after they had got out and 
were starting ahead on foot. We captured the whole 
crew — I do not know how many in all. They were 
reinforcements on their way to a part of their line 
that we were battering very hard, and by capturing 
them we helped the Anzacs a great deal, for they 
were able to get through for a big gain. 

We held that position, though they rained shells 
on us so hard all that day and night that we thought 
they were placing a barrage for a raid, and stood to 
arms until almost noon the next day. But our guns 
gave back shell for shell, and pounded the Turkish 
trenches and broke shrapnel OA^er them until they 
had all they could do to stay in them. 

Finally, our guns placed shell after shell in the 
enemy's communication trenches, and they could 
neither bring up reinforcements nor retire. So we 
went over and cleaned them out and took the trench. 
But then our guns had to stop, because we were in 
range, and the Turks brought up reinforcements 
from other parts of the line and we were driven back, 
after holding their trench all the afternoon. It was 
about fifty-fifty, though, for when they reinforced 
one part of the line, some of our troops would break 
through in another part. 



Limeys, Anzacs and Poilus 155 

That night there was a terrible rainstorm. I 
guess it was really a cloud-burst. We had all the 
water we wanted, then, and more. A great many 
men and mules were drowned, both of ours and the 
Turks. Trenches were washed in and most of the 
works ruined. Several Turkish bodies were borne 
into our trench, and two mules came over together, 
but whether they were Turkish, or French, or 
British, I do not know. 

A few days after the rain stopped I was going 
along the road to the docks at " V " Beach when I 
saw some examples of the freakishness of shells. 
There was a long string of mules going back to the 
trenches with water and supplies of various kinds. 
We drew up to one side to let them pass. Two or 
three mules away from us was an old-timer with only 
one ear, and that very grey, loaded to the gunwales 
with bags of water. He had had his troubles, that 
old boy, but they were just about over, for there was 
a flash and the next minute you could not see a thing 
left of Old Missouri. He had vanished. But two 
of the water-bags were not even touched, and another 
one had only a little hole in it. There they lay on 
the ground, just as though you had taken the mule 
out from under them. The mules next him, fore 
and aft, were knocked down by the concussion but 
unharmed ; but the third mule behind had one ear 
cut to shreds, and the man walking beside him was 
badly shot up and stunned. 



156 Gunner Depew 

A little farther on a shell had struck the road and 
ploughed a furrow two or three feet wide, and just as 
straight as though it had been laid out by a surveyor. 
The Turk who fired it must have been a Kelley pool 
shark, for after running as straight as an arrow for 
three or four yards, the furrow turned off at almost a 
right angle and continued for a yard or two more be- 
fore the shell burst and made a big hole. That Turkish 
gunner must have put a lot of English on that shell 
when he fired it. He got somebody's number with 
that shot, too, and the lad paid pretty high, for there 
was blood round the hole, not quite dry w^hen we got 
to it. 

Coming back along this same road we halted to let 
another convoy of mules go past, and an officer of 
the Royal Naval Division came up and began 
talking to our officers. He was telling them how he 
and his men had landed at "X" Beach, and how 
they had to wade ashore through barbed wire. " And 
you know," he said in a surprised way, as if he him- 
self could hardly believe it; "the beggars were 
actually firing on us ! " That is just like the Limeys, 
though. Their idea is not to appear excited about 
anything at any time, but to act as though they were 
playing cricket — standing around on a lawn with 
paddles in their hands, half asleep. The Limeys are 
certainly cool under fire, and I think it was because 
the Anzacs did so finely at Gallipoli that people have 
not given enough credit to the British regulars and 



Limeys, Anzacs and Poilus 157 

R.N.D.'s, who were there — and did their share of 
the work as well as any men could. 

After a while this officer started on his way again, 
and as he cut across the road a French officer came 
up. The Limey wore a monocle, which caused the 
French officer to stare at him a minute before he 
saluted. After the Englishman had passed him the 
Frenchman took a large French penny out of his 
pocket, screwed it into his eye and turned towards 
us so that we could see it, but the Limey could not. 

That was not the right thing to do, especially 
before enlisted men, so our officers did not laugh, 
but the men did, and so loud that the Limey turned 
and caught sight of the Frenchman. He started 
back towards him, and I thought sure there would be 
a fight, or that, more likely, the Limey would report 
him. Our officers should have placed the French- 
man under arrest, at that. 

The Frenchman expected trouble, too, for he 
pulled up very straight and stiff, but he kept the 
penny in his eye. The Limey came up to him, 
halted a few paces off, and without saying a word, 
took the monocle out of his eye, spun it three or 
four feet in the air, and caught it in his other eye 
when it came down. 

"Do that, you blighter," he said, and faced 
about and was on his way down the road. They had 
the lauQ^h of the Frenchman after that. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE CROIX DE GUERRE 

When we had been on shore at GalHpoli for about 
three weeks we found ourselves one morning some- 
where near Sedd-el-Bahr under the heaviest fire I 
have ever experienced. Our guns and the Turks' 
were at it full blast, and the noise was worse than 
deafening. It had been bad enough when only our 
guns were pounding, but when the Turkish howitzers 
and rifle guns of all calibres joined in it was simply 
hell-all-over-us, with Old Nick heating the hinges. 

A section of my company was lying out in a shell- 
hole near the communication trench with nothing to 
do but wait for a shell to find them. We were stiff 
and thirsty and uncomfortable, and had not slept for 
two nights. In that time we had been under con- 
stant fire, and had endured several raiding parties and 
small attacks from the enemy trenches. 

We had no sooner got used to the shell-hole and 
were making ourselves as comfortable as possible in 
it when along came a shell of what must have been 
the Jack Johnson size, and we were swamped. 
We had to dig three of the men out, and though one 
of them was badly wounded we could not send him 

158 



The Croix de Guerre 159 

back to hospital. In fact, the shelUng was so heavy 
that none of us ever expected to come out aUve. 

So it was Hke keeping your own death watch, 
with the shells tuning up for the dirge. It was im- 
possible to listen to the shells. If you kept your 
mind on the noise for any length of time, it would 
split your ear drums, I am sure. So all we could do 
was to lie low in the shell-hole and wait for something 
to happen. 

Then they began using shrapnel on us, and one 
of our machine-gunners, who got up from his knees 
to change his position, had his head taken clean off 
liis shoulders, and the rest of him landed near my 
feet and squirmed a little, like a chicken that has just 
been killed. It was awful to see the body without 
any head move about in that way, and we could 
hardly make ourselves touch it for some time. But 
presently we rolled it to the other side of the hole. 

Then, to one side of us, there was a more violent 
explosion than any yet. The earth spouted up and 
fell on us, and big clouds of black smoke, sliding 
along the ground, covered our shell-hole and hung 
there for some time. One of our sergeants, from 
the regular French infantry, said it was a shell from 
a Turkish 150-mm. howitzer. That was only the 
first one. The worst thing about them was the 
smoke : people who think Pittsburg is smoky ought 
to see about fifty of those big howitzer shells 
bursting one after another. 



i6o Gunner Depew 

We could not tell what the rest of our line was 
doing, or how they were standing the awful fire, but 
we felt sure they were not having any worse time 
than we were. In a few minutes we heard the good 
old " 75's " start pounding, and it was like hearing 
an old friend's voice over the telephone, and every- 
body in our shell-hole cheered, though no one could 
hear us and we could barely hear each other. Still, 
we knew that if the " 75's " got going in their usual 
style they would do for an enemy battery or two, 
and that looked good for us. The " 75's " made the 
noise worse, but it was already about as bad as it 
could be, and a thousand guns more or less would not 
have made it any harder to stand. 

One of our men shouted in the sergeant's ear that 
the men in the line ahead of us and to the right were 
trying to give us a message of some kind. The 
sergeant stuck his head above the parapet and 
had a look. But I stayed where I was : the sergeant 
could see for himself ajnd me, too, as far as I was 
concerned. 

He shouted at us that the men in the other 
trench were trying to signal something, but he could 
not make it out because clouds of smoke would roll 
between them and break up the words. So he lay 
down again in the bottom of the hole. But after a 
while he looked over the parapet and saw a man just 
leaving their trench, evidently with a message for us, 
and he had not gone five steps before he was blown 



The Croix de Guerre i6i 

to pieces, and the lad who followed him got his, too, 
so they stopped trying then. 

And all the time the " 75's " were sending theirs 
to the Turk not far over our heads from about nine 
hundred yards behind us, and the howitzers were 
dropping their 240-pound bits of iron in every vacant 
space and some that were not vacant. It was just 
one big roar and screech and growl all at once, like 
turning the whole dog-pound loose on a piece of 
meat. 

The concussions felt like one long string of boxes 
on the ear, and our throats were so dry that it hurt 
to swallow, w^hich always makes your ears feel better 
after a strong concussion. One after another of our 
boys was slipping to the ground and digging his fists 
into his ears, and the rest sat on the parapet fire-step 
with their heads between their knees and their arms 
wrapped round their heads. 

Our sergeant came up to me after a while and 
began acting just as people do at a show, only he 
shouted instead of whispering in my ear. When 
people are looking at one show they always want to 
tell you how good some other show is, and that was 
the way with the sergeant. 

"You should see what they did to us at St. 
Eloi," he said. " They just baptised us with the big 
fellows. They did not know when to stop. When 
you see shelling that is shelling you will know it, my 
son." 



i62 Gunner Depew 

"Well, if this is not shelling, what the devil is 
it? Are they trying to kid us or are you, mon 
vieux? " which is a French expression that means 
something like "old-timer." 

" My son, when you see dug-outs caved in, roads 
pushed all over the map, guns wrecked, bodies twisted 
up in knots and forty men killed by one shell — then 
you will know you are seeing shelling." 

I told him I could get along without seeing any 
more of it than I had, and he started kidding me 
about it. He was a great card, this sergeant, and a 
very brave man. He always called us his children 
to our faces, but when he spoke of his men to other 
sergeants he called us "lice meat," because he said 
sailors were better fed than soldiers and were regular 
dessert for the cooties. 

Then one of our men sat up straight against the 
parapet and istared at us and began to shake all over, 
but we could not get him to say anything or move. 
So we knew he had shell-shock. And another man 
watched him for a while, and then he began to shake, 
too. The sergeant said that if we stayed there much 
longer we would not be fit to repel an attack, so he 
ordered us into the two dug-outs we had made in the 
hole, and only himself and another man stayed out- 
side on watch. 

The men in the dug-out kept asking each other 
when the bombardment would end, and why we were 
not reinforced, and what was happening, and when 



The Croix de Guerre 163 

the Turks would attack us. It was easy to see why 
we were not reinforced ; no body of men could have 
got to us from the reserve trenches. The communi- 
cation trenches were quite a distance from us, and 
were battered up at that. Some of the men said we 
had been forgotten and that the rest of our troops 
had either retired or advanced and that we and the 
men in the trench who had tried to signal us were 
the only detachments left there. 

Pretty soon another man and I relieved the two 
men who were outside on watch, and as he went 
down into the dug-out the sergeant shouted to us 
that he thought the Turks were afraid to attack. He 
also ordered one of us to keep a live eye towards our 
rear in case any of our troops should try to signal us. 
When I looked through a little gully, at the top of 
the hole, towards the other trench, all I could see was 
barbed wire and smoke and two or three corpses. I 
began to shiver a little, and I was afraid I would get 
shell-shock, too. So I fell a-thinking about Murray 
and how he looked when they took him off the wall. 
But that did not stop the shivering, so I thought 
about my grandmother and how she looked the last 
time I saw her. I was thinking about her, I guess, 
and not keeping a very good look-out, when a man 
rolled over the edge and almost fell on me. He was 
from the other trenches. I carried him into the dug- 
out, and went out again and stood my watch until 
the relief came. We were doing half-hour shifts. 



i64 Gunner Depew 

When I got into the dug-out again the man was 
just coming to. He was about as near shell-shock 
as I had been — by this time I was shivering only once 
in a while when I did not watch myself. He said 
four men had been sliced up trying to get to us before 
he came ; that they had lost eleven men out of their 
thirty-two, including the sergeant-major in command 
and two corporals ; that they were almost out of am- 
munition ; that the trenches on both sides of them 
had been blown in, and that they were likely to go 
to pieces at any moment. He said they all thought 
the Turks would attack behind their barrage, for he 
said the cuitain of fire did not extend more than a 
hundred yards in front of their trench. What they 
wanted us to do was to send a man back with the 
news and either get the word to advance, or retire, or 
wait for reinforcements, they did not care which — 
only to be ordered to do something. There was not 
a commissioned officer left with either of the detach- 
ments, you see, and you might say we were up in 
the air — only we were really as far in the ground as 
we could get. 

The man thought there were others of our lines 
not far behind us, but we knew better; so then he 
said he did not see how anyone could get back from 
where we were to our nearest lines. I did not see 
either. Then we all imagined we were forgotten and 
would not come out alive, and you can believe me or 
not, but I did not much care. Anything would be 



The Croix de Guerre 165 

better than just staying there in that awful noise with 
nothing to do, and no water. 

Our sergeant said he would not ask any man to 
attempt to carry the message, because he said it was 
not only certain death but absolutely useless. And 
he began to show that he was near shell-shock him- 
self. I was just going to ask him if he thought it was 
a real shelling now when I saw that he was just about 
all in, so I did not try to kid him. I figured, too, 
that he had probably talked about St. Eloi merely to 
cheer us up, you might say, and make us think it was 
not so bad, after all. 

Then I began to shiver again, and I thought to 
myself that anything would be better than sitting in 
this hole waiting to go mad, so I decided I would 
volunteer. I did not think there was any chance to 
get through, but it seemed as if I just had to do some- 
thing, no matter wh-at. I had never felt that way 
before, and had never been anxious to go West with 
a shell for company, but I have felt that way since 
then several times, I can tell you. 

The man was telling us that some time before 
they had seen the Turks bringing up ammunition 
from some storehouses, and that they had watched 
through glasses to see if our guns got either the am- 
munition trains or the storehouses, but that they did 
not come anywhere near. He said their sergeant 
wanted our messenger to tell them that, too. He 
would say a few words very fast, then he would shiver 



i66 Gunner Depew 

again, and his jaws would clip together and he would 
try to raise his hand, but could not. 

Then our sergeant asked the name of the other 
sergeant, ^nd when the man told him, he said the 
other man was .senior to himself, and therefore in 
command, and would have to be obeyed. 

He seemed to cheer up a lot after he said this, and 
did no^t shiver any more, so I thought I would volun- 
teer then, and I said to him, " Well, mon vieux, do 
you think we are seeing real shelling now ? ' ' And 
I was going to say I would go, but he looked at pie 
in a funny way for a second and said, " Well, my 
son, suppose you go and find out."' 

I fancied lie was kidding me at first, but then I 
saw he meant it. I thought two things about it : 
one was that anything was better than staying there, 
and the other was that the old dug-out was a pretty 
fair place, after all. But I did not say anything to 
the sergeant or the other men — ^just went out of the 
dug-out. The sergeant and another man went with 
me and helped me over the back wall of the hole. I 
lay flat on the ground for a minute to get my bear- 
ings, and then started off. 

I set my course for where I thought the com- 
munication trenches were, to the right, and I just 
stood up and ran, for I argued that as the shells were 
falling so thick, and it was open ground, I would not 
have any better chance if I crawled. 

I tripped several times and went down, and each 



The Croix de Guerre 167 

time I thought I was hit, because when I got it in 
the thigh at Dixmude it felt a good deal as though I 
had tripped over a rope. And one time when I fell 
a shell exploded near me and I began to shiver again, 
and I could not go on for a while. All this time I 
did not think I would get through, but finally, when 
I reached what had been the communication trench, 
I felt I had done the worst part of it, and I began to 
wish very hard that I would get through — I was not 
at all crazy about going West. 

The mouth of the communication trench had 
been battered in, and the trenches it joined with were 
all filled up. There were rifles sticking out of them 
in several places, and I thought probably the men 
had been buried alive in them. But it was too late 
then, if they had been caught, so I climbed over the 
blocked entrance to the communication trench and 
started back along it. It led up through a sort of 
gully, and I thought it was a bad place to dig a com- 
munication trench in because it gave the Turks 
something like the side of a hill to shoot at. 

Every now and then I would have to climb in 
and out of a shell-hole, and parts of them were 
blocked where a shell had caved in the walls. In 
one place I saw corpses all torn to pieces, so I knew 
the Turks had found the range and had got to this 
trench in great shape. At another place I found lots 
of blood and equipment but no bodies, and I con- 
cluded that reinforcements had been caught at this 



i68 Gunner Depew 

spot and that they had retired, taking their casual- 
ties with them. 

The Turks still had the range, and they were 
sending a shell into the trench occasionally, and I was 
knocked down again, though the shell was so far 
away that it kicked me over from force of habit more 
than anything else. I felt dizzy and shivered a lot, 
and kept trying to think of Murray or anything else 
but myself. 

So, finally, I got to the top of the little hill over 
which the gully ran, and on the other side I felt al- 
most safe. Just down from the cresrt: of the hill was 
one of our artillery positions, with the good old 
" 75's " giving it to the Turks as fast as they could. 

I told the artillery officer about what had hap- 
pened, had a drink of water, and thought I would 
take a nap. But when they telephoned the message 
back to Divisional Headquarters the man at the re- 
ceiver said something to the officer, and he told me 
to sitay there and be ready. I thought sure he would 
send me back to where I came from, and I knew I 
could never make it again, but I did not say 
anything. 

When I looked round I saw that our real position 
was to the right of where the artillery was, and that 
there were three lines of trenches with French in- 
fantry in them. So the trenches I had come from 
were more like outposts than anything else, and were 
cut off. I felt pretty sure, then, that the boys in 



The Croix de Guerre 169 

them would never come back alive, because as soon 
as their fire ceased the Turks would advance, and to 
keep them back our guns would have to wipe out our 
men, and if they did not, the Turks would. At 
first I was glad I had come out, but then I remem- 
bered what the artillery officer had said, and I sup- 
posed I would have to go back and stay with them or 
bring them back. Either way, there was not one 
chance in a hundred that any of us would make it. 
Because when I got through it was really a miracle, 
and nobody would have thought it possible. 

Then the officer told me to go back to the Beach, 
where our naval guns were, and that I was detailed 
to them. Maybe you do not think I was glad? But 
there was rough work still ahead of me, because when 
I got beyond the third line I saw a wide open field 
that was light grey from the shell smoke hanging 
over it, and I could see the flashes where the big ones 
were doing their work, and I had to go through that 
field. 

I fell over and over again, sometimes when I 
thought a shell was near and sometimes when I had 
no reason for it — ^only I was thirsty and shivering all 
the time, and was so weak I could not have choked a 
goldfish. I do not remember hardly anything about 
going through that field, and you might say the next 
thing I knew was when I was overtaken by a dis- 
patch-runner, and got in a tin tub at the side of a 
motor-cycle and was taken to the guns. 

L 



170 Gunner Depew 

I felt ready for a Rip Van Winkle nap then, but 
the officer in command would not let me. He said 
they were short of gunners — the terrific shelling had 
killed off dozens of them — and as he knew I could 
point a gun, he had ordered them over the telephone 
to get me to the Beach as fast as possible. He 
spotted the two warehouses I have spoken of for me, 
and said it was up to us to put them out of commis- 
sion. The gun was a 14-inch naval, and that looked 
good to me, so I bucked up a lot. The warehouses 
were about ten or eleven miles away, I should judge, 
and about thirty or forty yards apart. 

I felt very weak, as I have said, and shivered now 
and again, so I did not think I could do any gunning 
worith whistling at. But they loaded the old 14-inch 
and made ready, and we got the range and all was 
set. The officer told me to let her ride. So I said 
to m5^self : "This one is for you, Murray, old boy. 
Let's go from here." 

So I sent that one along and she landed direct, 
and the warehouse went up in fire and smoke. I felt 
good then, and I laid the wires on the other ware- 
house and let her go. But she was too high and I 
made a clean miss. Then I was mad, because I had 
sent that one over for myself. So I got the cross 
wires on the warehouse again and said to myself : 
"This is not for anybody — just for luck, because I 
sure have had plenty of it this day." 

Then the juice came through the wires and into 



The Croix de Guerre 171 

the charge and away she went, and up went the 
second warehouse. That made two directs out of 
three, and I guess it hurt the Turks some to lose all 
their ammunition. The officer kissed me before I 
could duck, and slapped me on the back and I col- 
lapsed. I was just all in. 

They brought me round with rum, and they said 
I was singing when I came to. When they tried to 
sing, to show me what song it was, I considered it 
was " Sweeit Adeline " they meant. But I do not 
believe I came to singing, because I never sang 
"Sweet Adeline" before, that I know of, or any 
other song when anybody w^as in range. But I had 
heard it lots of times, so maybe I did sing it at that. 

Then I went to sleep feeling fine. The next 
morning the detachment from the Cassard was with- 
drawn, land I saw some of the men who had been in 
the two trenches, but I was not near enough tO' speak 
to them. So I do not know how they got out. 

You never saw a happier lot in your life than we 
were when we piled into the lifeboats and launches 
and sitarted for the Cassard. The old ship looked 
prdtty good to us, you can bet, and we said if we 
never put our hoofs on that place again it would be 
soon enough. 

We w^ere shelled on our way out to the Cassard, 
and one boat was overturned, but the men were 
rescued. Two men in the launch I was in were 
wounded. But we did not pay any attention to 



172 Gunner Depew 

their shelling — the Turks might just as well have 
been blowing peas at us through a soda straw for 
all we cared. 

I noticed that when we came near the Cassard 
the other boats held up and let our launch get into 
the lead, and that we circled round the Cassard^s 
bows and came up on the starboard side, which was 
unusual. But I did not think anything of it until 
I came up over the side. Ther^were the side boys 
lined up, and the Old Man there, with the ship's 
steward beside him. 

He took the log-book from the steward and 
showed it to me, and there was my name on it. Now 
when you are punished for anjrthing you are logged, 
but I could not make out what I had done to get 
punished for, so I was very much surprised. But 
the Old Man slapped me on the back and everybody 
cheered, and then I saw it was not punisliment but 
just the opposite. 

When people ask me what I received my Croix 
de Guerre for I tell them I do not rightly know, and 
that is a fact. I do not know whether it was for 
going back from those trenches or for destroying the 
warehouses. So I always tell them I got it for work- 
ing overtime. That is what the Limeys say, or if 
they have the Victoria Cross they say they got it for 
being very careless. Ask one of them and see. 

All of us were certainly glad to be aboard the 
Cassard again, and if any place ever looked like home 



The Croix de Guerre 173 

to me it was the old ship. Our casualties were very 
high, and we were therefore ordered to put back to 
Brest. We had a great little celebration that night, 
and next morning weighed anchor and started back, 
after clearing for action. 

I was still pretty blue about Miu-ray, but very 
much relieved as to the safety of my own skin, and I 
reasoned that, (after the Dardanelles and my last day 
there, they had not made the right bullet for me yet. 
The rest of us felt about the same way, and we were 
singing all the time. 



CHAPTER XV 

JE SUIS BLESS^ 

As usual, when we got to Brest, there was rush work 
day and night on the Cassard to get her out, and 
supplies of all kinds were loaded for our next visit to 
the Turks. The French garbles were always keen 
for the trip back to Brest, for they were sure of 
tobacco and other things they needed. 

My twelfth trip to the Dardanelles was different 
from the others. The Cassard was doing patrol work 
at the time in the neighbourhood of Cape Helles. 
Those of us who had served on the Penin^ila before 
were thanking our stars for the snap we were having 
— ^just mooning around waiting for something to 
happen. 

We had not been there very long before some- 
thing unexpected did happen, for we ran into two 
enemy cruisers — which I afterwards heard were the 
Werft and the KaiserlicJie Marine — one on the star- 
board and one on the port. How they had managed 
to sneak up so near I do not know. They opened 
up on us at not much more than a thousand yards, 
and gave us a good deal of hell from the start, though 
with any kind of gunnery they should have done for 
us thoroughly. 

174 



Je Suis Blesse 175 

We came right back at them, and were getting 
in some pretty good shots. I was in the 14-inch 
gun turret, starboard bow — ^my old quarters — and we 
were letting them have it about four shots every five 
minutes and scoring heavily. 

I do not know how long we had been fighting 
when part of our range-finder was carried away. It 
was so hot, though, and we were so hard at it that 
little things like the time did not bother us. It is 
hot in any gun turret, but I have always noticed 
that it is hotter there in the Dardanelles than in any 
other place. The sweat would simply cake up on us, 
until our faces were covered with a film of powdery 
stuff. 

But the range-finder was carried away, and 
although it looked bad for us, I was feeling so good 
that I volunteered to go on deck and fetch another 
one. I got outside the turret door and across the 
deck, got the necessary parts, and was coming back 
with them, when I received two machine-gun bullets 
in the right thigh. One went clear through bone 
and all and drilled a hole on the other side, while the 
other came within an inch of going through. The 
peculiar thing is that these two were in a line above 
the wound I got at Dixmude. The line is almost as 
straight as you could draw it mth a ruler. 

Of course, it knocked me down, and I hit my 
head a pretty hard crack on the steel deck, but I 
was able to crawl on to the turret door. Just as I 



176 Gunner Depew 

was about to enter, the gun was fired. That par- 
ticular charge happened to be defective. The shell 
split and caused a back fire, and the cordite, fire and 
gas came through the breach whidh the explosion 
had opened. 

It must have been a piece of cordite which did 
it, but whatever it was, it hit me in the right eye 
and blinded it. The ball of the eye was saved by 
the French surgeons and looks normal, but it pains 
me greatly sometimes, and they tell me it will always 
be sightless. 

I was unconscious immediately from the blow 
and from the quantity of gas which I must have 
swallowed. This gas did me a great deal of damage, 
and gives me dizzy spells often to this day. I do 
not knowl what happened during the res^ of the 
engagement, as I did not regain consciousness until 
three days later, at sea. But I heard in the hospital 
that the French super-Dreadnought Jeanne d'Arc 
and the light cruiser Normandy were in it as well 
as ourselves, though not at the time I was wounded, 
and that we had all been pretty well battered. The 
Cassard lost ninety-six men in the engagement and 
had forty-eight wounded. Some of our turrets were 
twisted into all manner of shapes, and part of our 
bow was carried away. One of our lieutenants was 
killed in the engagement. 

I was told that both the Werft and the Kaiser- 
liche Marine were sunk in this engagement. I have 



Je Suis Blesse 177 

seen pictures of sailors from the Werft who were 
prisoners at internment camps. 

When we arrived at Brest the wounded were 
taken from the ship in stretchers and, after we had 
been rested for about fifteen minutes on the dock, 
put into ambulances and rushed to the hospital. On 
the way, those who could leaned out of the ambulance 
and had a great time with the people along the 
streets, many of whom they knew, for the Cassard 
was a Brest ship. And, of course, the women and 
children yelled " Vive la France ! " and were glad to 
see the boys again, even though they were badly 
done up. 

Some of our men were bandaged all over the face 
and head, and it was funny when they had to tell 
their names to old friends of theirs who did not 
recognise them. As soon as one of the Brest people 
recognised a friend, off he would go to get cigarettes 
and other things for him, and some of them followed 
us almost to the hospital. 

While we were going into the hospital there was 
a crowd of children round the door, and they began 
to sing the " Marseillaise,'* and very loyal-hearted 
kids they were too, for they evidently knew the whole 
song, which is more than can be said for most 
Americans, many of whom do not even know that 
we have a national anthem. 

It seemed like a palace — ^that hospital. The 
women and children — ^the kindest hearts in the world, 



i^S Gunner Depew 

I do believe, were right there — ^brought over chairs 
and tables and cards and newspapers and books and 
everything you could think of, and they brought 
them from their own living-rooms and not from the 
attic, where they had lain since they had become 
listed with the casualties. 

We had a fine lot of musicians among the men 
— most of them could blow some kind of horn or 
other, and before the week was up almost every one 
of them had his own particular kind otf torture-tube 
placed in his hands as he lay in bed. They would 
hardly stop to look at it, but would begin blowing 
away for all they were worth, and hardly ever did they 
oare a rap what the rest were playing. Once in a while 
someone did happen to play the same tune as another, 
but each had his own ideas as to how it ;^hould be 
played, and it would take an expert to discover they 
were the same tunes. They were, sure, the Agony 
Quartette — four or five quartettes, in fact. 

We also had a phonograph, but very few needles, 
and it got to be very scratchy. They had one 
American record, and it was supposed to be a special 
treat for me ; some well-meaning Frendiwoman 
must have brought it as soon as she heard there was 
an American garby there. 

I never was crazy about that song, and after they 
had played it a few times I used to throw everything 
I could lay my hands on at the phonograph when- 
ever they started to give me my great treat again. 



♦ Je Suis Blesse 179 

There was one French orderly who never could get 
it through his thick head — he was good-hearted, 
tlhough — ^that I did not like it, and he .would play it 
time after time. I guess he thought it cheered me 
up so much that I became enthusiastic and wanted 
to throw things because I was glad. The name of 
the merry little ditty was "Good-bye, Good Luck, 
God Bless You." And I am warning whoever wrote 
it, right here, to steer clear of me if he wears any 
identification disc telling that he did it. 

The hospital held about 1,800 patients at the 
time, and was pretty crowded, but every one of the 
patients received the bes^t of food and treatment, and 
some of the stunts that the French surgeons did were 
really wonderful. As soon as they were able ito learn, 
the permanent blinded or crippled men were taught 
various trades in which their misfortune would not 
hamper them, and many were put in the way of earn- 
ing more money afterwards than they had been a,ble 
to earn before. 

I do not know, of course, what the surgeons did 
to me, but I heard that they had my eyeball out 
on my cheek for almost two hours. At any rate they 
saved it. The thigh wounds were not dangerous in 
themselves, and if it had not been for the rough itreatt- 
menlt they got later they would be quite healed by 
this (time, I am sure. 

I really think I got a little extra attention in 
the hospital, in many ways, for the French were at 



i8o Gunner Depew 

all times anxious to show their friendliness to 
America. Every time my meals were served there 
was an American flag on the platter, and always a 
large American flag draped over the bed. I had 
everything I wanted given to me at once, and when 
I was able to, all the cigarettes I could smoke, which 
were not many. 

While I was still in bed in the hospital I received 
the Croix de Guerre, which I had won at the Dar- 
danelles. The presentation was made by Lieutenant 
Barbey. He pinned an American flag on my breast, 
a French flag beneath it, and beneath that the War 
Cross. He kissed me on both cheeks, of course, 
which was taking an advantage of a cripple. But it 
is the usual thing with the French, as you know — 
I mean the kissing, not the meanness to cripples. 

When he had pinned the medal on he said he 
thanked me from the bottom of his heart, on be- 
half of the French people, and also thanked all 
the Americans who had come o\er to help a 
country with which most of them were not con- 
nected. He said it was a war in which many nations 
were taking part, but in which there were just two 
ideas, Freedom and Despotism, and a lot more things 
I cannot remember. He finished by saying that he 
wished he could decorate all of us. 

Of course, it was great stuff for me, and I thought 
I was the real thing sure enough, but I could not 
help thinking of the remark I have heard here in 



Je Suis Blesse i8i 

the States — "I thank you and the whole family 
thanks you." And it was hard not to laugh. Also, 
it seemed funny to me, because I did not rightly 
know just what they were giving mg the medal for 
— ^though it was for one of two things — and I do not 
know to this day. But I thought it would not be 
polite to ask, so I let it go at that. 

There were twelve other naval officers who were 
present, and they and all the other people did a lot 
of cheering and " vived " me to a fare-you-well. It 
was great stuff altogether, and I should have liked 
to get a medal every day. 

One day I received a letter from a man who had 
been in my company in the Foreign Legion and with 
whom I had been pretty chummy. His letter was 
partly in French and partly in English. It was all 
about who had been killed and who had been 
wounded. He also mentioned Murray's death, which 
he had heard about, and about my receiving the Croix 
de Guerre. I was wishing he had said something 
about Brown, whom I had not heard from, and who, 
I knew, would visit me if he had the chance. 

But two or three days later I got ^another letter 
from the same man, and when I opened it out 
tumbled a photograph. At first all I saw was that 
it was the photograph of a man crucified with 
bayonets, but when I looked at it closely I saw it 
was Brown. I fainted then, just like a girl. 

When I came to I could hardly make myself 



i82 Gunner Depew 

think about it. Two of my pals gone ! It hurt me 
so much to think of it that I icrushed the letter up 
in my hand, but later I could read parts of it. It 
said they had found Brown this way near Dixmude 
about two days alfter he had been reported missing. 
So three of us went over and two stayed there. It 
seems very strange to me that both my pals should 
be crucified, and if I were superstitious I do not 
know really what I would imagine. It made me 
sick and kept me from recovering as fast as I would 
have done otherwise. Both Brown and Murray were 
good pals and very fine men in a fight. I often think 
of them both and about the things we did together, 
but lately I have tried my best to keep off the sub- 
ject, because it is very sad to think what torture 
they must have had to endure. They were both a 
great credit to their country. 

The American consul visited me quite often, and 
I got to calling him Sherlock, because he asked so 
many questions. We played lotts of games together, 
mostly with dice, and had a great time generally. 
After I became convalescent he argued with me that 
I had seen enough, and though I really did not think 
so^ — ^however much I disliked what I had seen — he 
got my discharge from the service on account of 
physical inability to perform the usual duties. After 
I had been at the hospital for a little over a month 
I was discharged from it, after a party in my ward 
with everyone taking part, and all the horns blowing, 



Je Suis Blesse 183 

and all the records except my favourite dirge played 
one after another. 

Sherlock arranged everything for me — ^my pas- 
sage to New York, clothing, and so forth. I ran up 
to St. Nazaire and saw my grandmother, loafed 
around a while, and also visited Lyons. 

I met a girl there who was staying with some 
people I knew, and she told me, a little bit at a time, 
what she had been through. I do not know whether 
she was a Belgian or not, but she was in Belgium at 
the outbreak of the war. When the Germans took 
the town she was in they put up signs on the doors 
notifying the inhabitants that all the girls must 
report in the square the following morning. 

This girl and her sister reported with the rest. 
They were divided into two classes, and the class in 
which the two sisters were was told to reportt at the 
station the next morning. They went home and 
broke the news to their mother, who was quite old 
and who took it very hard. They had no idea what 
they were being sent away for. The mother begged 
permission to keep one of the girls, and the Germans 
placed the other sister in the class that was to stay. 

Three girls who refused to go were dragged to 
the streets and killed in cold blood, and the mother 
of one girl, who refused to let her go, was shot. The 
girls were sent to the courtyard of a big hotel, mus- 
tered with a roll call, and loaded into cars. After a 
nine-hours' journey they were taken from the trains 



184 Gunner Depew 

to a large building partly in ruins and there the Ger- 
man soldiers were waiting for them. The girls were 
not given food or fire. 

Lalte that night, after the Germans were through 
with them, they were made to go outside and dig 
potatoes from the hard ground, but they were not 
allowed to eat any of the potatoes. They also had 
to make beds, chop wood, haul timber and do all 
tlie dirty work that has to be done wherever German 
swine are penned. 

They were not allowed to write to their people, 
nor did they receive any word from outside. Fresh 
batches of girls arrived from time to time, but they 
were not allowed to mix with those who had been 
there before them. When the girls reached such a 
condition that they were no longer of use to the 
Germans they were sent back to Belgium. 

The girl who told me all this had killed her child, 
as all of them did. When she got home she found her 
mother had been killed, but she never saw her isister 
again nor did she know what had become of her. 

After a short time I returned to Brest, and got 
my passage on the Georgic for New York. I had 
three trunks with me full of things I had picked up 
in Europe and had been keeping with my grand- 
mother. Among my belongings were several things 
I should have liked to show by photographs in this 
book, but no one but mermaids can see them now, 
for down to the locker of Davy Jones they went. 



CHAPTER XVI 

CAPTURED BY THE MOEWE 

When the tugs had cast off and we had dropped our 
pilot I said to myself : " Now we are off, and it's the 
StMe's for me — end of the line — ^far as we go — 

IF " But the "if" did not look very big to 

me, though I could see it with the naked eye all 
right. 

I went to the after-wheelhouse and took a slant 
aft the compass which read W.N.W., f W. I stayed 
and chatted a while with the bo3"s there, and then 
went to see the commissary s^teward and laid in a 
isupply of cigarettes. Provided with these, I went 
back to the aifter forecastle and found a lot of fire- 
men, oilers and wipers who were off watch. I played 
poker for cigarettes with these fellows until the game 
broke up, with one fireman in possession of all the 
cigarettes. After that I went to my stateroom and 
turned in. 

Next morning I went to the galley, and after a 
hard struggle with the chef got something to eat. 
Then came boat-drill. The siren shrilled three times, 
and we were all stationed at the boats, which were 
swung out on the davits. We carried ten lifeboats, 
five on the starboard and five on the port, 

M i8s 



i86 Gunner Depew 

When the siren blew the second tnne it was a 
sight to see the scramble on deck for the boats. 
Someone yelled, "Submarine on the port bow!" 
and all the little fellows were trampled on, and one 
lad was pushed down the fiddley (see p. 201) and 
broke his leg. I made up my mind then and there 
that if we should happen to get torpedoed it was me 
for a hatch cover and no lifeboats need apply. I 
would ra)ther take my chances with a match for a 
buoy than in a rush for the boats with that gang. 

It was rough weather those first two days out, and 
it was raining most of the time. I should not have 
been on deck at all, because tlie dampness made my 
legs ache, but there was one of the gunners at the 
stern gun that was good for a laugh every time I 
talked to him. It was a shame the way that fellow 
was going to treat anj'^ Gennans he saw. No sub- 
marine w^ould have a minute's chance with him ; he 
would put salt on any Boche tail in sight. I took it 
all in land told him what a guy for gunpowder he was, 
but after a while I got tired trying not to laugh in his 
face and left him. 

I loafed around or slept all day, and at night 
started back to the after-forecastle to have another 
go at cigarette poker. You know, of course, that 
ships passing through the war zone cover all their 
port-holes, allowing no lights to show whatsoever, and 
even smoking on deck is forbidden. So I was pretty 
sore when I found the firemen had their port-holes 



Captured by the Moewe 187 

wide open, and the light shining through like a 
searchlight. 

I bawled out to them and asked them whether 
they thought they were in London or Germany, and 
if they did not know they were in the war zone. 
Then one of them said, "War zone be damned! 
There is no >such thing as a war zone." We had a 
little argument, and after a while they closed the 
poit-holes. But we did not have a poker game. 

Then I got an envelope and paper from the 
steward, and went to my stateroom with the inten- 
tion of writing a letter to a friend and mailing it as 
soon as I arrived at an Atlantic port. But a Limey 
knocked at the door just after I got sta.rted, and he 
talked to me for a long time. Finally he asked me 
what I was doing. I felt like telling him I was doing 
nothing but wishing he would leave me, but I said I 
had been going to write a letter when he came in. 
He asked me where I was going to mail it, and I said 
I would stop the mail steamer in the morning. And 
I think he believed me ! 

At last he went out and I turned in without 
writing the letter. I got up about four o'clock next 
morning, which was Sunday, December 10th, 1916 
— a date I do not think I will ever forget. 

As soon as I was dressed I went down to the 
forecastle peak and from there into the paint locker, 
where I found some rope. Then back again on deck 
and made myself a hammock, which I rigged up on 



i88 Gunner Depew 

the boat deck, expecting that I would have a nice sun 
bath, as the weather had at last turned clear. 

As (Soon ais I had the hammock strung I weiiit 
down to the baker and had a chat with him — (and 
stole a few hot buns, which was what I was really 
after — ^and away to the galley for breakfast. I was 
almosft exactly amidships, sitting on an old orange 
box. I had not been there long when Old Chips, 
the ship's carpenter, stuck his head in the door and 
sang out, " Ship on the starboard bow." I did not 
pay any alttention to him, because ships on the star- 
board bow were no novelty to me, or on the port 
either. Chips was not crazy about looking at her 
either, for he came in and sat on another box and 
begajn eaiting. He said he thought she was a tramp, 
and that she flew the British flag astern. 

I ate all I could get hold of and went out on deck. 
I stepped out of the galley just in time to see the fun. 
The ship wais jusJt opposite us, when away went our 
wireless and isome of the boats on the starboard side, 
and then boom ! boom ! and we heard the report of 
the guns. I heard the shrapnel w^hizzing around us 
just as I had many a time before. I jumped back 
in the galley, and Chips and the cook were shaking 
so hard they made the pans rattle. 

When the firing sitopped I went up to the boat 
deck. I had on all my clothing, but instead of shoes 
I was wearing a pair of wooden clogs. The men and 
boys were crazy — nishiing round the deck, and 



Captured by the Moewe 189 

knocking each other down, and everybody gefbting in 
everj^body else's way. We lowered our Jacob's lad- 
ders (rope ladders with wooden steps), but some of 
the men and boys were already in the w^ater. Why 
they jumped I do not know. 

There was an oiler on the Georgic named Mallen, 
and though he wore glasses, he wais the toughest bird 
I ever saw. He had been almost stone blind for a 
year and a half, and he could hardly see at all without 
his glasses, which were tliick and powerful. He was 
on tiie boalt deck when they began shelling us, and it 
was a miracle he was not killed at once, but he was 
able to hide behind a funnel. When they quit firing 
you could have worn that funnel for a peek-a-boo 
waist (open-work blouse), but M'allen was not 
scratched. I guess he was so tough the shrapnel was 
afraid of him. 

When he was going down the Jacob's ladder the 
fellow above him must have been in a hurry, for he 
kicked Miallen in the face and broke one of the lenses, 
which left Mallen with a monocle. He held it up in 
front of one eye and shut the other one, and that was 
the only way he could see a foot in front of him. 

Tlis^n the German raider Moewe headed right in 
towards us, and I thought she w^as going to ram us, 
but she backed water about thirty yards away. She 
lowered a lifeboat, and it made for the Georgic, pass- 
ing our men in the water as it came and crashing 
them on the head with boathooks when, the Huns 



igo Gunner Depew 

oould reach them. I noticed that there were red 
kegs in the German boat. 

When the Hfeboat reached the Jacob's ladder I 
went over to the port side of the Georgic, and then 
the Germans came over the side and hoisted up the 
kegs. The Huns were armed with bayonets and 
revolvers. Some of them went down into the engine- 
room and opened the sea cocks. About this time 
some more of the Limeys came up from the poop 
deck, and I told them to stay where I was, and tliat 
the Germans would take us over in lifeboats. 
Another squad of Deutschers hoisted eight of the 
dynamite kegs on their shoulders and went down into 
No. 5 hold with them. 

Meanwhile the Huns saw us on the boat deck 
and came up after us. And over went the Limeys. 
But I waited and one or two more waited with me. 
When the Germans came up to us they had their 
revolvers out and were waving them around and yell- 
ing, " Gott strafe England!" and talking about 
" schweinjaunde." Then, the first thing I knew, I 
was kicked off into the sea. I slipped off my trousers 
and coat and clogs, and, believe me, it was 
not a case of all dressed up and no place to go ! 

Then I swam hard and caught up to the Limeys 
who had jumped first. They were asking each other 
if they were downhearted and answering, " Not a bit 
of it, me lads," and trying to sing, "Pack up your 
troubles in your old kit bag," only they could not do 



Captured by the Moewe 191 

much singing on account of the waves that shpped 
into their mouths every time they opened them. 
That was just Hke Limeys, though. They will carry 
on, to use a well-known expression, " till hell freezes 
over." 

Some of the boys were just climbing up the 
Jacob's ladder on the Moewe when the old Georgic 
let out an awful roar and up went the deck and the 
hatches high in the air in splinters. One fellow let 
go his hold on the ladder and went down, and he 
never came up. The Germans were making for the 
Moewe in the lifeboat, and we reached it just before 
they did. Up the ladder we went and over the side, 
and the first thing we caught sight of was German 
revolvers in our faces, forming us all into line. 

The lifeboat brought back the ship's papers from 
the Georgic and we had roll call. They kept us on 
deck in our wet underwear, and it was very cold 
indeed. Then the first mate and the Old Man and 
one of the German officers called off the names, and 
we found we had fifty missing. 

The Boche commander had cheek enough to say 
to our Old Man that he was not there to kill men, 
but to sink all ships that were supplying the AUies ! 
He said England was trying to starve Germany, but 
they would never succeed, and that Germany would 
starve the Allies very soon. 

After roll call some of us asked the Germans for 
clothes, or at least a place to dry ourselves in, but 



192 Gunner Depew 

Fritz could not see us for the dust of the ocean, and 
we juist had to stand there and shiver till we shook 
the deck almost. Then I went and sat down on the 
pipes that feed the deck winches. They had quite a 
head of steam in them, and I was beginning to feel 
more comfortable when I got a good clout on the 
side of the head for sitting there and trying to keep 
wann. It was a German garby, and he started call- 
ing me all the various kinds of ' ' schweinhund ' ' he 
could think of, and he could think of a lot. 

Finally they mustered us all on another part of 
the deck, then drove us down into the forecastle and 
read the martial law of Germany to us. At least, I 
guess that is what it was. It might have been the 
" Help Wanted — Dog Catchers" column from the 
Berlin Lokal Taggahhle for all most of us knew or 
oared. It shows what cards the Germans are^ — read- 
ing all those four-to-'the-pound words to us shivering 
garbles, who did not give a dime a dozen whether 
we heard them or not. Fritz is like some other hot 
skdtches — ^he is funniest when he does not mean to 
be. Every German is a vaudeville skit when he acts 
natural. 

There were hammocks there and we jumped into 
them to get warm, but the Germans came down with 
their revolvers and bayonets and took the hammocks 
away, and poured water on the decks and told us to 
sleep there. They could not have done a worse 
trick than that. 



Captured by the Moewe 193 

Then they put locks on the port-holes, and told 
us that anyone caught fiddling with the locks would 
be shot at once. This was because we might sight a 
British or French man-of-war at any time, and las the 
Moewe was sailing under the British flag and trying 
to keep out of trouble, they did not want us at the 
points signalling our own warships for help. If they 
had struck any of the Allied ships and had a fight 
we would have died down there like rats. 

The Moewe had already captured the Voltaire, 
Mount Temple, Cambrian Hange and the King 
George, and had the crews of these vessels between 
decks with us. These men told us how the Germans 
were trealting them, and it looked to me as though 
the evening would be spent in playing games and a 
pleasant time would be had by all — very. 

The crew of the Mount Temple were on deck 
working when the raider suddenly opened fire ,on 
them. Two or three men jumped into the water, 
and the Germans turned a gun on them while they 
were swimming and killed them. That was just a 
sample of what had happened to them. 

The men now began running up and down in a 
line to keep warm, but I took a little run on my own 
hook and treated myself to as much of a survey 
of the ship as I could. I do not believe the Moewe 
had more than a f-inch armour plate, but behind that 
she had three rows of pig iron, which made about a 
foot in thickness. There was nothing but cable 



194 Gunner Depew 

strung along the deck, and when I saw that I would 
have given anything to have had a crack at her with 
a 14-inch naval. And I sure wished hard enough 
that one of our ships would slip up on us, whether we 
were caught between decks or not. I went aft as 
far as the sentry would let me, and I saw that she had 
three spare 6-inch guns under the poop deck and two 
6-inch pieces mounted astern. The guns were 
mounted on an elevator, and when the time came 
they ran the elevator up until the guns were on a 
level w^ith the poop deck, but otherwise they were out 
of sight from other ships. 

The boys from the other ships told us that when 
the Moewe fired it w^as a case for prayers, because 
she trembled like a leaf. Besides, they never knew 
what she was battling with, and I know myself that 
it is an awful sensation down there between decks 
thinking that lat any moment your ship will be hit 
amidships and the whole crowd of you sent West. 

They said that when the Moewe was about to go 
into action there would be a lot of yelling and run- 
ning round on deck, and the Huns would lie below 
with their revolvers and bayonets or cutlasses and 
intimidate the whole lot, shouting and poking with 
the bayonets. They used to come down regularly 
and shout the '* schweinhund " code at us and kick 
us and shove us about like cattle. 

For our first meal they slung a big feed-bag half 
full of ship biscuits — hard-tack — to us and some 



Captured by the Moewe 195 

dixies of tea. After this festival we began roaming 
up and down the deck again, because it was the only 
way to keep warm. I guess we looked like some of 
the advertisements in magazines, where they show a 
whole family sitting round a Christmas tree in their 
underwear and telling each other that Whosis Unions 
— " The Roomy Kind " — were just what they wanted 
from Santy. Only we did not have any Clnustmas 
tree to sit round. We must have looked funny, 
though, and I would have had a good laugh if I had 
not been so cold. 

We could not go to sleep because the decks were 
wet, nor could we sit down with any comfort for the 
,same reason. Besides, we thought we might run 
up against a British or a French cruiser at any 
minute, and most of us thought we would stay up 
and get an eye full before we started for Davy 
Jones's well-known locker. 

About two bells next morning the Moewe^s en- 
gines began to groan and shake her up a bit, and we 
could hear the blades jump out of the water every 
now and again and tear away. She went ahead in 
this way for some time, and we were hoping she was 
trying to get away from a cruiser, and some of us 
were voting for the cruiser to win and others hoping 
the Moewe would get her heels clear and keep us 
from getting ours. 

The Huns were running up and down the deck 
yelling Uke mad, and one of our men began to yell, 



196 Gunner Depew 

too. He was delirious, and after he yelled a bit, he 
jumped up and made a pass at the sentry, who shot 
at him but missed. The shot missed me, too, but 
not by very .much. Then they dragged the delirious 
man up on deck, and Lord knows what they did 
with him, because we never saw him again. But we 
did not hear any sound that they might have made 
in shooting him. 

Then the Huns began sheUing, and they kept 
it up for a while. About the time the firing ceased, 
this man Mallen — the man who had his glasses 
broken — was walking up and down the deck holding 
the one lens to his eye, when he bumped up against 
a -sentry on his blind side. The sentry began to 
smash him all over the deck. He knocked him down 
several times, and split his lip for about four inches 
with the butt of his revolver. The rest of us were 
just lachi'ng to lay our hands on the sentry, but the 
other sentries warned us off with their revolvers, and 
one of them clipped me on the head with the hilt of 
his bayonet when I started forward. 

When we picked Mallen up he had lost his mon- 
ocle and was as blind as a bat, but as tough as ever. 
In a. minute ^or two one of the men came up with his 
monocle. He had found it far away from where 
Mlallen had been, and there was not so much as a 
scratch on the lens. Mallen was real glad to get it. 
Pait of the gold band that fitted over the nose was 
still on it, so we broke this off and rubbed it until 



Captured by the Moewe 197 

the edge was smooth as the gold rim, and to cheer 
Mallen up a bit I told him about the Limey officer 
at "V" Beach who had spun his monocle in the 
air and caught it in his other eye. Mallen said he 
would learn to do that if it took him a hundred years. 
He started to practise right away. Anyone else 
would have held on to the lens and not monkeyed 
with it, but that was not Mallen. He was throwing 
the glass into the air all the time and trying to catch 
it in his eye, when it was all he could do to hold it 
there like a monocle. I have seen him spin it and 
let it drop a dozen times, and yet it never broke. 

Then the Huns ordered us up on deck to see the 
ship they had been firing at, and when we came up 
the companion-way they were just bringing the other 
ship's skipper aboard. It was the French collier St. 
Theodore, hove to off the starboard side, with a prize 
crew from the Moewe aboard and wigwagging to the 
raider. 

I looked round while we were taking the air and 
shivering, and I never saw a stronger watch than they 
were keeping on the Moewe. There were two men 
up forward on the forecastle peak, one on the star- 
board and one on the port bow, one up in the 
crow's-nest, about twelve on the bridge, and four on 
the poop deck. I do not believe that gang could 
miss a splinter in the water, and every one of them 
had binoculars. 

There was nothing to be seen on deck but the 



igS Gunner Depew 

torpedo tubes up against the sea gates, with tar- 
pauHns over them, and piles of lifebelts thrown on 
top of the hatches. On the bridge they had wicker 
baskets with carrier pigeons in them, and near the 
funnels they had livestock — a cow, pigs, dogs, and 
chickens — all eaged in. 

Then the Huns began sihouting, and they drove 
us below deck again. The place where we had been 
was filled with smoke, from what or why I do not 
know, but it was almost impossible to breathe in it. 
When the smoke cleared up a bit the Marathon 
started again, for we were still in our underwear 
only. One of the boys ha,d asked Fritz for clothing, 
and Fritz said the English had tough enough skins 
and they did not need clothing. Then he said : 
" Wait until you see what our German winters are 
like." 

Next morning the engines began to tear away 
again and the guns started firing. After a while the 
firing ^ftopped and the engines, too, and after about 
an hour they had the Old Man of the Yarrowdale 
aboard. She was a British ship chartered by the 
French and bound for Brest and Liverpool with a 
very valuable cargo — aeroplanes, ammunition, food 
and automobiles. 

When they forced us on deck again the St, 
Theodore was still in sight, but she had the Yarrow- 
dale for company. Both were trailing behind us 
and keeping pretty close on. While we were on 



Captured by the Moewe 199 

deck we saw the German sailors at work on the main 
deck making aboiiit ten rafts, and when they began 
to place tins of hard-tack on the rafts, a tin to each, 
we imagined they were going to heave us over the 
side and let us go. But instead, they began telling us 
we would land in the States, and then they marched 
us between decks again. 

We had only been there a short time when some 
of the German officers came down and asked if any 
of the men would volunteer to go stoking on the 
Yarrowdale, and we almost mobbed them to take us. 
They began putting down the names of the men who 
were to go, and I talked them into putting mine 
down, too. Then I felt about five hundred pounds 
lighter. 

Five o'clock came, and by that time I had for- 
gotten to do any worrying. We received our usual 
rations, and most of us who had volunteered sup- 
posed that we would receive clothes and shoes. In 
the morning an officer came down below and read 
out the names of those who were to go, and I felt 
even Hghter when he called mine. We were each 
given a lifebelt and mustered on deck. 

There was a moving-picture machine on the boat 
deck, and as we came up the hatchway the operator 
began turning the handle. I was whistling, " Hello, 
Hawaii, How Are You?" and one of the sentries 
said to me in English: "That's all Americans are 
good for, anyway." Then he started to whistle. 



200 Gunner Depew 

" Goodbye, My Blue Bell, Farewell to You." He 
said some more then, to the effect that we Amerioans 
had very little on our minds and, generally speaking, 
were not responsible. I never was guilty before, 
and never have been .since, but I must confess that at 
this moment I made up some poetry. It came to me 
just as easy as if I had been in the business, and I 
said to him : " We can smile \vhen we fight, and 
whistle when we're right, and knock the Kaiser out 
of sight." They were shoving us over the side and 
down the Jacob's ladder, and this lad took hold of 
me where my collar would have been, if I had one, 
and gave me a push that brought me up against 
the rail before my turn. 

The sea was pretty nasty, and some of the men 
had narrow escapes from falling between the Moewe 
and the lifeboats when the swells rocked us. One 
man fell from the ladder and broke his neck on the 
gunwale of the lifeboat. They took over boat after 
boat to the Yarrowdale until, finally, we were all 
there. Then they mustered us on deck and warned 
us not to start anything, because they had a time 
bomb in the engine-room and two on the bridge. 
Meantime they had brought over several boatloads 
of hard-tack, and we threw it into No. 3 hold. This 
was to be our food for some time. 



X 



CHAPTER XVII 

LANDED IN GERMANY 

Aboard tlie Yarrowdale was a coolie crew, and when 
they gathered them on deck, the coohes began to 
pray, and though it is nothing to laugh at, I could 
not help but chuckle at the way some of them went 
aibout talking to their various gods. They were 
beginning to smell danger and were pretty nervous. 
Every one of the coolies had a cane and a pair of 
palm beach trousers. The Huns were loading them 
in the lifeboats to be taken back to the Moewe with 
their sea bags, and one of them got too nervous and 
was islow about getting into the lifeJboat, So the 
Germans shot him without a word. 

Then the Huns called out the names of those who 
had volunteered to go stoking, and this included me. 
We were forced down the fiddley into the fire room. 
The fiddley is a shaft that runs from the main deck 
of a sihip to the engine-room. I looked round a bit 
and saw a German standing not very far from the 
fiddley, so I asked him if we would be given shoes. 
He said no. Then I asked him if we had to stoke 
in our bare fedt and he said yes — that we did not 
need shoes. Then he went into the engine-room. 

N 201 



202 Gunner Depew 

I looked at the narrow passage he went through, 
and at the narrow passage of the fiddley to the main 
deck, and I talked to my feet as I used to at Dix- 
mude. I said: "Feet, do your duty." They did 
it and I flew up the fiddley. I-^ever wanted to see 
that stoke-hole again. 

I sneaked up to where the rest of the fellows were 
and the guards drove us into No. 4 hold. There was 
nothing but ammunition in it. They battened the 
hatches down on us, which made the hold waterproof. 
And as thait malie it practically airtight, the only air 
the five hundred and eighty of us got was through the 
ventilators. That hold was certainly foul. 

Next day some of the men had got cigarettes 
somewhere. Lord knows how they did it, but Mallen 
had quite a lot of them and he passed them round. 
Some of the men vi^ould not take any of his because 
they said they had some of their own and, sure 
enough, in a few minutes they, as well as the rest, 
had lit up and were puffing away in great style. I 
divided a cigarette with another fellow. Remember, 
we were sitting and standing on ammunition all this 
time. It shows how much we cared whether school 
was kept or not. 

The Germans saw the smoke coming out of the 
ventilators and they were crazy with fright. A gang 
of them in double quick dro\'e us out with whips. 
Mallen and I were towards the head of the Une going 
up the ladder, and Mallen was swearing because he 



Landed in Germany 203 

had just lost his monocle and could hardly see a foot 
in front of him. He said a sentry had tripped him 
or knocked him down, and that when he got up his 
monocle was gone. 

They lined us up on deck and read us the Riot 
Act. As we stood there I could see one man after 
another put his hands behind his back and then bring 
them to the front again. Finally, the man next to 
me nudged me with his elbow. I put my hands 
behind my back and he slipped something into them, 
and I passed it to the next man. Then the first thing 
I knew there was Mallen with his monocle in his eye 
again. Somebody had found it and brought it up 
with him, and we had passed it along almost the 
whole line before it got to Mallen. 

They sent us down into the coal bunkers. It was 
simply hell there. Coal dust to breathe and eat and 
sleep on, only we could not sleep because we had to 
use the bunkers for all pui*poses, including those of 
nature, and after a short time not one of us could 
sleep. 

Also, by this time, some of the men had lost 
their heads completely ; in fact, had gone violently 
crazy, and the rest of us were afraid of them. We 
were all thinking of the fight that might occur any 
moment between the Yarrowdale and some other 
vessel, and we knew we were in the likeliest place 
for the vessel to be struck. Even though we were 
not hit amidships, if the ship were sinking, we did not 



204 Gunner Depew 

think the Germans would give us a chance to escape. 
We supposed from what they had said that we would 
go down with the ship. And going down on a ship 
in which you are a prisoner is quite different from 
going doAvn with one for which you have been fight- 
ing. You arrive at the same place, but the feeling 
is different. 

Some of us thought of overpowering the crew 
and taking the vessel into our own hands, and we 
got the rest of the sane or nearly sane men together 
and tried to get up a scheme for doing it. I was 
strong for the plan and so were Mallen and several 
others, but the Limey officers who were with us ad- 
vised against it. They said the Germans were taking 
us to a neutral countrj^, where we would be interned, 
which was just what the Huns had told us, but what 
few of us believed. 

Then some others said that if we started anything 
the skunks would fire the time bombs. We replied 
that at least the Germans would go West with us, 
but they could not see thait there was any glory in 
that. For myself, I thought they would not fire the 
bombs until the last minute, and that we would have 
a chance at the boats before they got all of us any- 
way. Old iMallen put up quite a talk about it, and 
it was funny to see him sititing there on the coal with 
his monocle slipping out of his eye repeatedly, argu- 
ing that we would all have an equal chance of getting 
away, even if nmny of us did go West. There were 



Landed in Germany 205 

only thirteen German sailors on board, besides 
their commander. This last Hun was named Bade- 
witz. 

So the pacifists ruled, because we could not do 
anything unless we were all together, and there was 
no mutiny. They said we were hotheads, the rest of 
us, but I still think we could have made a dash for it 
and overpowered our sentries, and either gone over 
the side with the lifeboats, or taken over the whole 
ship. It would have been better for us if we had 
tried, and if the pacifists had known what was com- 
ing to us they would have fired the time bombs 
themselves rather than go on into that future. How- 
ever, that is spilt milk. 

We were not allowed to open the port-holes 
while we were in the bunkers, under penalty of death, 
and in the dark, in that stinking air, it is no wonder 
that many of us went crazy. Among us was a fellow 
named Hamngton, about six feet tall and weighing 
around 250 pounds. He seemed to be all right 
mentally, bult some of us thought afterwards he was 
dotty. Anyway, I do not blame him for what he 
did. He rushed up the fiddley and opened the door. 
A German sentry was there, and Harrington made 
a swing at him and then grabbed his bayonet. The 
sentry yelled and some others came down from the 
bridge and shot Harrington through the hand. After 
they had beaten him pretty badly, the bull of the 
bullies, Badewitz himself, came over and hammered 



2o6 Gunner Depew 

Harrington all round the deck. Then they put him 
in irons and took him to the chart-room. 

Next day we were sitting in the fiddley getting 
warm when the door opened and there was Badewitz. 
He yelled "Heraus! " and began firing at us with 
a revolver, so we retired right to the coal. The others 
would ndt go back after this, but Mallen and I did. 
We had sat there about three-quarters of an hour 
when Mallen lost his monocle. It fell all the way 
down to the stoke-hole, and I thought for sure it was 
gone this time, and so did Mallen. Badewitz poked 
his ugly face in at the door again, but we were too 
quick for him and he did not catch us. I had to 
shove Mallen over, though, because he could not see. 

Then the first thing we knew, back came the 
monocle. One of the stokers had found it on his 
scoop just as he was about to swing the scoopful 
into the fire door, and there it was, still unbroken. 
Mallen was so glad he almost went crazy, too. 

Pretty soon the door opened again, and Mallen 
gave me his monocle and ran into the farthermost 
corner of the bunkers, because he thought it was 
Badewitz come to shoot at us again, and he was 
afraid he would lose his eye-glass. But it was only 
a German sentry. He threw down a note. It was 
written in English and read, " Pick out eight men 
for cooks." So we picked out eight men from the 
various vessels, and they went on deck and rigged 
up a galley aft. 



Landed in Germany 207 

But we did not receive any knives, forks, spoons, 
or plates. The first meal we got was nothing but 
macaroni, piled up on pieces of cardboard boxes. 
Then we appointed four men to serve the macaroni, 
and they got four pieces of wood, the cleanest we 
could find, which was not very clean at that, and they 
dug round in the macaroni and divided it up and put 
it in our hands. We had to eat it after that with our 
grimy fingers. Those who were helped first had to go 
farthest back on the coal to eat it, and those who were 
helped last got less, because the dividers grew more 
careful towards the end and gave smaller portions. 

But we did not get macaroni very long. A cook 
from the Voltaire was cleaning a copper dixie which 
the macaroni had been cooked in, and he was holding 
it over the side when the vessel rolled heavily, and 
dropped the dixie into the drink. A sentry who saw 
him drop it forced him up to Badewitz, who began 
mauhng him before the sentry even had told his 
story. After a wliile Badewitz quit pounding the 
cook, and listened to the sentry. Then Badewitz 
said the cook had put a note in the dixie before he 
dropped it, so they had him up again and put him 
in irons. After that they sent the rest of the cooks 
back, and would not let them on deck again. They 
had plenty of canned goods and meat aboard. But 
they would not give us any. 

Five of the men were buried at sea that day. 
More men were going mad, and it was a terrible 



2o8 Gunner Depew 

place ; pitch dark, grimy, loose coal underfoot, coal- 
diisty air to breathe, excrement everywhere. Some 
of the crazy men howled like dogs. But we were 
not as much afraid of these as we were of the others 
w^ho kept still, but slipped round in the dark wdth 
lumps of coal in their hands. We got so we would 
not ^o near each other for fear w^e were running into 
a crazy man. Those of us who were sane collected 
as near the fiddley as we could, and we would not let 
the others come near us, but shoved them back or 
sliied lumps of eoal at them. And some one of us 
would begin to act queer. Maybe he would let out a 
howl suddenly, without any warning. Or he would 
just quit talking and begin to sneak round. Or he 
would squat down and begin to mumble. We could 
not tell just when a man had begun to lose his mind. 
He would seem like the rest of us, because none of 
us was much better than a beast. 

We could not take turns sleeping and standing 
watch against the crazy men, because when we talked 
about it, we agreed that none of us could tell 
whether or not the sentries would go mad while on 
watch and have the rest of us at their mercy. It 
was awful to talk about becoming demented in this 
way, and to think that you yourself might be the 
next, and that it Avas almost sure to happen if you 
did not get isome sleep soon. But it was worse to 
find a man near you going, and \m\e to rank liim 
wdth the other insane men. 



Landed in Germany 209 

I began talking with Mallen about what would 
happen if there were more lunatics than sane men, 
and he said then the sane men would be the crazy 
ones, because he said the only thing that makes one 
man sane is that there are more like him than there 
are insane men. He said whichever kind was in the 
majority was the normal or sane kind, it did not make 
any difference which. It began to get too deep for 
me, so I quit arguing. But Mallen kept it up until 
I told him it looked as if he were going, too, and 
then he sliut up. I think it was not good for us to 
talk or think much about it, or we would have gone 
off. 

That night two of the garbles got out of the 
fiddley, somehow, into No. 3 hold, and brought back 
some bologna and leaf tobacco. I got hold of quite 
a bit of the leaves, rolled them, dampened the roll, 
corded it and let it dry. Two days later I had a fine 
twist, hard as a bullet. That is a trick I had picked 
up from the Limeys. If the Germans knew we had 
had this stuff they would have strung us up, I am 
sure. 

The days passed like that, with nothing to do 
but suffer, and starve and freeze. It got colder and 
colder, and all we could wrap ourselves in was the 
coal. We began to speculate on where we were. 
It was not till later that an old skipper in our lot 
told us that we had rounded the northern coast of 
Iceland. ^ 



210 Gunner Depew 

Now and again some of our men in the fiddley 
would shout, " British cruiser on the horizon ! " and 
we would shake like leaves, and ;sing and dance 
round, and shout ourselves hoarse, until the Grermans 
had to shoot down on us to make us quiet. But no 
cruiser ever came. It seemed Hke months when only 
days passed. 

Finally, one day a lad yelled "Land! " and we 
all dived for the fiddley hke wild men, and those who 
could get near looked out, and sure enough! 
there was the coast of Norway, very ragged and 
rocky and covered with snow. We thought it was 
all over, and that we would be landed at Bergen. 
Then there was the usual running round and yelling 
on deck, and we were not so sure we would be 
landed, and very suddenly it got colder than ever. 

I was in the fiddley, aching to get out, and ready 
for anything that might happen, when the door 
opened suddenly and Badewitz grabbed me, and 
asked me in EngUsh whether I was a quartermaster. 
I said yes, and he pulled me by the arm to a cabin. 
I did not knoiw what was going to happen, but he 
took an oilskin from the wall and told me to put it on. 

Two sailors were there also, and they put life- 
belts on, and then I was more puzzled than ever, and 
scared, too, because I thought maybe they were 
going to throw me overboard, though what that had 
to do with being a quartermaster I could not see. 

But they conveyed me up to the bridge and told 



Landed in Germany 211 

me to take the wheel. What their idea was I do not 
know. Possibly they wanted a non-combatant at 
the wheel in case they were overhauled by a neutral 
vessel. We were going full speed at, the time, but 
as soon as I took the wheel she cut down to half 
speed, and stayed that way for half an hour. Then 
up to full speed again. 

Pretty soon there was a tramp steamer on the 
starboard bow, and almost before I saw it, there were 
two more sentries on each"!s.ide of me, j>rodding me 
with their revolvers, and warning me to keep on the 
course. They w^ore civilian clothes. 

Then we went through ,the Skager Rack and 
Cattegat, the narrow strips of water which lead to 
the Baltic and we were only a mile from shore, with 
vessels all about us. It would have been easy for 
me to signal what our ship was and who were aboard, 
but they had six sentries light on my neck all the 
time to keep me from it. I never wanted to do any- 
thing worse in my life than jump overboard or 
signal. But I would have been shot dowTi before 
I had more than started to do either, so I just stayed 
with the wheel. 

We were nearing one of the Danish islands in 
the Baltic when we sighted a tug. She began to 
smoke up and blow her siren. The sailors got very 
excited and ran about in crazy style, and Badew^itz 
began shouting more orders than they could get 
away with. The sentries left me and ran with the 



212 Gunner Depew 

rest of the Fritzes to the boat deck and started to 
lower one of the lifeboats. But Badewitz was right 
on their heels, land kicked the whole crowd in greait 
style, roaring like a bull all the time. 

I left t'he wheel and ran to the end of the bridge 
to jump overboard. But the minute I let go of the 
wheel the vessel fell off the right course, and they 
noticed it, and Badewitz sent five of them up pn the 
bridge and three others to the side with their re- 
volvers to shoot me if I s^hould reach the water. I 
think if I had had any rope to lash the wheel with 
I could have got away and they would not have 
known it. 

When the five .sailors reached the bridge one lof 
them jumped for the cord and gave our siren five 
long blasts in answer to the tug. The tug was about 
to launch a torpedo and we whistled just in time. 
One of our men was looking from the fiddley, and he 
saw the Huns making for the lifeboat, so he got 
two or three |Others and they all j^elled together, 
"Don't let them get away!" thinking that they 
■would get the boat over and leave the ship, and try- 
ing to yell loud enough for the tug to hear them. 
Blade witz took this man and two or three others, 
whether they were the ones who yelled or not, and 
put them in kons. I thought there was going to be 
a mutiny, but it did not come off, and I am not sure 
what the Huns were so excited about. 

The other four sailors who came up on the 



Landed in Germany 213 

bridge did not touch me, but jUst covered me with 
their revolvers. That was the way with them — ^they 
would not touch us unless Badewitz was there or 
they had bayonets. The old bull himself came up 
on the bridge after he had collected a few men, 
threw me around quite a bit and kicked me down 
from the bridge and slammed me into the coal 
bunkers. I felt pretty sore, as you can imagine, and 
disappointed and pretty low generally, but when I 
sailed through the fiddley and landed on the coal I 
had to laugh, no matter how bad I felt, for there was 
Mfallen just finding his monocle again. Every time 
you saw him he was losing it or having it brought 
back to him. 

After a while we heaixi the anchor chains rattling 
through on thedr way to get wet, and we pulled up. 
Then every German ship in the Baltic came to look 
U5 over, I guess. They opened up the hatch covers, 
and the Hun garbies and gold-sJti'ipes came aboard 
and looked down at us, and spat all thej^ could on 
us, and called us all the different kinds of swine in 
creation. They had them lined up and filing past 
the hatchways — all of them giving us a glance-over 
in turn. Maybe they sold tickets for this show — it 
would be like the JIuns. 

At first we were trying to get out from under the 
hatch openings and the shower of spittle, but some 
Limey ofiicer sang out, " Britishers all ! Don't give 
way ! ' ' and we stood still and let them spit their 



214 Gunner Depew 

damned German lungs out before we would move 
for them, and some Comishmen began singing their 
song about Trelawney. So we made out that we did 
not know such a thing as a German ever lived. 

We got better acquainted with German spittle 
later, and, believe me, they are great little spittei's, 
not much on distance or accuracy, but quick in 
action and well supplied with ammunition. Spitting 
on prisoners is the favourite indoor and outdoor sport 
for Germans, men and women alike. 

When the ishow was over, they drove us up on 
deck and put us to work thi'owing the salt pork and 
canned goods into two German mine-layers. Wliile 
we were at it, a Danish patrol boat came out and 
moored alongside us, and some of her officers came 
aboard and saw us. They knew we were prisoners 
of war, and they knew that a vessel carrying 
prisoners of war must not remain in neutral waters 
for over twenty-four hours. 

That night two men named Barney Hill and 
Joyce, the latter a gunner from the Mount Temple, 
sneaked up on deck and aft to the poop deck. There 
was a pair of wooden stairs leading to the top of the 
poop deck, and Joyce and Hill Hfted it and got over 
the side with a rope to it. The two of them got down 
into the water all right, but Joyce let out a yell 
because the water was so cold, and a German patrol 
boat heard him and flashed a searchlight. They 
picked up Joyce at once, but Barney was making 



Landed in Germany 215 

good headway and was almost free when they 
dragged him in. They took them up on the patrol 
boat, and when they put them back on the Yarrow- 
dale, Badewitz knocked them about and put them in 
irons. Then he began to s^hoot at their feet with his 
revolver, a sailor standing by to hand him another 
revolver when the first one was empty. After that 
he gashed their faces with the barrel of the revolver 
and shouted, "I'm Badewitz! I'm the man who 
fooled the English! " and shot at them afresh. 

When the men were searched papers were found 
under their shirts wrapped in oilskin and written in 
English, French, Itahan and Spanish. These they 
were supposed to take to different consuls if they 
got ashore, and all the notes had different signatures. 
I do not know where they got the paper, but they 
used coal to write with. The oilskin they tore out of 
the coat which Badewitz had given me when I took 
the wheel and which they forgot to take away from 
me, because they were so busy with their boots when 
they slammed me into the bunkers again. When 
I saw that they had brought Hill and Joyce on board 
again, I threw the oilskin away, so that they should 
not find out I had given them the wrappers for the 
notes. 

All the while the sailors were celebrating, 
drinking and eating and yelHng, as usual, and the 
whistles on all the German ships were blowing, and 
they were having a great time. After about thirty 



2i6 Gunner Depew 

hours we left, being escorted by a mine-layer and a 
mine-sweeper. I asked a German garby if that was 
the whole German navy, and he looked surprised land 
did not know I was kidding him, and said no. Then 
I said, " So the Enghsh got all the rest, did they? " 
and he handed me one on the mouth with his bayonet 
hilt, ISO I quit chaffing him. One of them hit Mallen, 
too, so Mallen ,watched for him with a lump of coal, 
waiting for him to pass the fiddley door, but he never 
came. 

We saw rows and rows of mines, and the German 
sailors pointed out What they said were H.M.S. 
Lion and Nomad, but I do not know whether they 
were the same ships that were in the Jutland battle 
or not.* Finally we landed at Swinemiinde just as 
the bells were ringing the old year out and the new 
year in. We were a fine dish of blackbirds to hand 
the Kaiser for a New Year's present, believe me. 

They mustered us up on deck, and each of us got 
a cup of water for our New Year's spree. Then we 
saw we were in for at, and all hope vanished, but we 
were glad to be released from our hole, because we 
had been prisoners since December 10th — ^three days 
on the Moewe and eighteen on the Yarrowdde, and 
the coal was not any softer than when we first sat 
on it. 

• The Nomad -was one of the British destr-yers sunk in the battle. 
The Lion, Admiral Beatty's flagship, came out of the-fight with its due 
quota of honourable scars. 



Landed in Germany 217 

So we began singing, " Pack up your troubles in 
your old kit bag, and smile, boys, smile. What's the 
use of worrying? It's never worth while," and so 
forth. They made us shut up, but not before we 
asked ounselves if we were downhearted, and every- 
body yelled "No! " 

And thait is how we gave our regards to 
Swinemiinde. 



CHAPTER XVIII 



^* PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES 



We arrived at Swinemiinde, on the east shore, and 
after we had had our drink of water and had been 
driven back into the bunkers, Badewitz went across 
to the wesft «dde in a launch with Joyce and Hill and 
a guard of sailors. They were to be shot nexit morn- 
ing, with some others, at a public shooting-festival. 
The rest of us wrapped ourselves in lumps of coal 
as best we could and tried to sleep. 

In the morning erowds of Germans came aboard 
and were turned loose on the boxes in the hold. It 
was a sight to see them rip off the covers and gobble 
the salami and other stuff that we carried. Table 
manners are not needed where there is no table, I 
guess, but if you had seen them, you would say these 
Germans did not even have trough manners. I have 
seen hogs that were more finicky. 

While they were at it, hand to band with the 
cliow, giving and receiving terrible punishment, we 
prisoners were mustered on deck, counted, kicked on 
to tugs and transferred to the west bank, where the 
mob was waiting for us. My wounds, as you can 
imagine, were in a pretty bad state by this time, and 

2l8 



"Pack Up Your Troubles" 219 

were getting more painful every minute, so tTiat I 
found I was growing ugly and anxious for an argu- 
ment. I knew tliat if I stayed in this mood I would 
probably never come out alive, for there is every 
chance you could pick a quarrel while you are a 
prisoner that will mean freedom for you — but only 
the freedom of going West, which I was not anxious 
to try. 

I had been delirious a bit, I think, and dreamed 
a good deal about Murray and Brown. Once I saw 
myself crucified, too, and although I would not let 
myself get superstitious, it seemed to me that it was 
all I could expect. I do not know what that feeling 
should be called, but it worked out hke this : Three 
of us had s^taited ; two had gone West ; would not all 
three go West? And the two who had gone were 
crucified; would not the third go that way, too? 
Sometimes it seemed almost wrong that I should ever 
get away — ^almost like deserting Murray and Brown. 
Then I would reason that all that was foolish, and I 
would say, with the Limeys; "There are just two 
ways of looldng ait it : either you die or you do not 
die. If you die, you are dead. If you do not die, 
you will have to some time. Either way, you are 
safe. So why choose? " 

Then I would argue that if you could not help 
yourself, the only thing to do was to put on a bold 
front and pretend that you liked your medicine. So 
I would say, " Carry on, Chink ! " and go about as 



220 Gunner Depew 

though I did not give a damn. But I never could 
handle myself so that the Huns should think I did 
not mind their rough stuff, and I guess I was pretty 
saucy. When I think of it noAV, it is a wonder I did 
not gdt it for being too cheeky, if for nothing else. 

When we got near the west bank, on the tugs, 
we could see that we were up against a battle with 
our arms tied. Over half the crowd was women and 
children, I should say, and the rest were labourers, 
cand old civvies, reserve soldiers, and loafers gener- 
ally. We could see the spit experts — the spit 
snipers, deployed to the front, almost. 

As we went ashore the bombardment began, and 
we were not only under fire of spit, if you could call 
it that, but also of stones and bottles and sticks and 
mosit anyithing that could be thrown. I discovered 
then why so many of our major league ball players 
have German names. As we were marched along, 
the crowd tramped along the sitreet with us, heaving 
bricks and spitting and ringing the changes on 
"schweinhund." We had an armed guard, of 
com^se, but all they did was to guard the crowd when 
some of us could not ,^tand it and tried to get back 
at some of the mob. In a civiHsed country, as you 
probably know, prisoners are protected from mobs 
by their guards. 

All this time, " lest you forget," we had no shoes 
and no clothing — only what had once been our under- 
wear. It is all right to be a Coney Island snowbird 



"Pack Up Your Troubles" 221 

and pose around in your bathing suit in the drifts, 
because you are in good condition and, last but not 
least, because you don't have to do it. Think out 
the other side of it for yourself. 

They marched us into a field where there was 
nothing much but guns and ammunition and snow, 
and set us up in something like skiraiishing order. 
We stood there for isome time, and then we saw a lot 
of Huns with the new long rifles coming towards us, 
yelling just as they did in battle, and we thought sure 
we were being used for practice targets. • It is a 
good thing they halted and stopped yelling when 
they did, or we would all have started for them to 
fi^ht it out, for we were not the kind that likes to be 
butchered with hands in the air, and we would have 
been glad of a ehance to get a few of them before 
they got us. But they did halt, and then surrounded 
us, and drove us away through swamps and woods 
and shallow water or slush. The women followed, 
too, and there were plenty of bricks and spit left. 
Women as well as men are the same the world over, 
they say. I wonder! You can just picture the 
women of, say, Rockland, Maine, following a crowd 
of German prisoners that way, can't you? I fancy 
not. But of course the women of Rockland are 
pretty crude — no kultur at all — and Gott never com- 
missioned President Wilson to take the lid off the 
strafe-pot. 

They marched us along the docks, and it looked 



222 Gunner Depew 

as thougli the whole German navy was tied up at 
Swlnemlinde. We saw many of the sliips we had 
heard about, among them being the famous Vulcan, 
the mother ship for submarines. There were many 
sailors loafing along the docks, and they gave the 
women a hand with their day's work. They were 
no better with a brick, but they had more ammuni- 
tion when it came to spitting. One of them tripped 
a young boy by the name of Kelly and, as you would 
never doubt, Kelly picked up a stone and crashed the 
sailor with it. Kelly was then bayoneted twice in the 
left leg. We began singing our popular favourite, 
" Pack up your troubles, etc.," and when they heard 
us, how the swine stared ! 

Then they took us past the German soldiers' quar- 
ters. The men were at rifle practice, and I guess all 
of us thought how handy we would be as targets. 
But when we got near them they quit practising and 
crowded around us, yelling " 'Raus ! Zuriick ! " 

Finally we got to the top of the hill, and were 
halted near the barracks while an officer read the mar- 
tail law to us. At least we thought maybe that was 
it. Merry wags, these Germans are. They will 
have their little joke. I do not know why it is, but 
there is something funny about the German language 
to most people who are not Germans. I have known 
sailors who had heard almost every language in the 
world, from Chinese to Finnish, and they never could 
help laughing when they heard Fritz begin to swal- 



"Pack Up Your Troubles'* 223 

low his palate and cough, which is what you must do 
to speak Deutsch. 

Thus many of us had all we could do to keep from 
laughing, and, to make things worse, Mallen, who 
stood behind me, monocle and all, began whispering 
a stoiy to me — which was old stuff, as I had heard it 
before — about two women coming out of church in 
Hull, and one of them said the minister had preached 
that the only way the Allies could win the war was to 
pray to God for victory. The other woman butted 
in and said, " But can't the Germans do that, too? " 
and the firsit woman retorted, "Yes, but would He 
understand them ? " 

The lads near him began laughing, and farther 
up the line some more men saw Mallen was doing 
something, and he looked so funny standing there in 
his underwear and one sock and a monocle that they 
began laughing, too. So one fellow snickered, and 
then another, and pretty soon the whole gang of us 
were just roaring. You would have thought we were 
at a burlesque show. 

At first the Germans did not know what to make 
of it. It was not their idea of how prisoners should 
act. And then they got very angry, because when 
a German cannot understand anything it makes him 
mad, and if it is an invention, or something Hke that, 
he has to steal it before he can calm down. But if it 
is only men that puzzle him — " 'Raus ! " 

The officer shouted around for a while, and then 



224 Gunner Depew 

the sentries shouted, too, and that niade it funnier, 
and we laughed all the harder. But by and by they 
got busy with bayonets on every fifth or sixth man, 
and that spoiled the joke. So we stopped laughing. 
Then the officer stalled bawhng at il?; until he saw 
that we were likely to break out again, so he stopped. 
Then he asked, in English of a kind, and in German, 
whether any of us understood Deutsch. I presume 
it was in accordance with the German custom that 
this routine had to be gone through with the 
prisoners. 

So, finally, we got what he wanted into our heads, 
but not a man budged. The officer became very 
miad then, and it looked as though we might be in 
for rough weather. Now I had picked up a few 
words in several languages, including Russian, and, 
of counse, French, but I did not know enough Ger- 
man to damn the Kaiser in, which is about all the 
use I ever thought I would have for the gargle. 

But I imagined that if the martial law were not 
read to us, we would never get into the barracks, 
which could not be any colder than it was outside, 
so I stepped out. I was supposed to be a civilian, 
but the officer spotted me for a man who had seen 
some mililtar}^ service, and he tried to find out what 
army I had been in. He learned everything about 
me but the tnith. 

Then he read the law to me, and I did not get 
one word of it. When he had finished he told me 



"Pack Up Your Troubles" 225 

to translate it to the men ; at least, I supposed that 
was what he wanted. So they conducted me in front 
of our men between four sentries and I opened up. 

The first thing I said to our boys was that if they 
did not want to see me shot, would they please not 
laugh, only I put it stronger. Because I fancied 
that I probably looked pretty funny as an interpreter, 
and that if they laughed the Germans would think 
I was kidding them or else not playing up to the job, 
and that would mean the finish of my career not 
only as a language expert but as everything else. 

Then I said that if the boys wanted to get on with 
the Germans they would have to cut out the rough 
stuff, and that the reason I was pulling this line of 
talk was so we could get into the barracks. I then 
said thoit the law was so long that I would have to 
keep on talking for a few minutes, otherwise the 
Huns would know I had not repeated the meaning 
of all of it, and I begged them not to laugh again at 
whatever I might say, and to pretend that they were 
understanding what the officer wanted them to. 

Now I think this officer knew enough English to 
gather what I was driving at, but he let me go on, 
because it would amount to the same thing in the 
long run. So I went on, trying to talk about some- 
thing and yet not make the men laugh. And they 
would nod their heads occasionally and pretend that 
they were catching the officer's drift. But Mallen 
and his monocle almost wrecked me, he looked so 



226 Gunner Depew 

funny, and I had to move a foot or two so as to bring 
another man between him and my eyes. I do not 
know just what I said, but finally I thought I had 
talked about as long as it would take to explain the 
G^mian law in English, and I shut up and turned 
to the officer. He took me back to the line. Then 
a Cockney, who seemed to think I really knew G€r- 
man or had some influence ^vith the officer, told me 
to ask him whether we would get a meal in the bar- 
racks. I was afraid to do it, so I told the Londoner 
that the officer had said to me that we would be fed 
if we behaved, and the Cockney was surprised that I 
had not told all the men that. So I explained to 
him that the officer had told me not to mention that, 
because he wanted to see how the men would act. 
That satisfied my Cockney, and he let it go at that. 

Finally they let us into the barracks, and the first 
thing we saw was a great big pile of hay. That 
looked good to us and we made a rush and dived 
into it. But the Huns told us to take the hay out 
and throw it in the middle of the road. They had 
to use force before we would do it. We gave in, how- 
ever, and started to carry it out. Some of the young 
boys were crying, and I do not blame them much. 

But one of the lads tried to hide some of the hay 
behind a box and was caught doing it, and two sen- 
tries clouted liim from one end of the barracks to the 
other. His nose was broken and his face mashed 
to a jelly. But there was nothing we could do, so 



"Pack Up Your Troubles" 227 

we just wandered up and down the barracks, about 
as we did between decks on the Moewe, trying to 
keep wami. 

While this Marathon was on we heard a whistle 
blown very loudlj^ and when we looked out we saw 
a wagon piled up with old tin cans. Then we were 
told to form single file, walk out to the wagon and 
each get a can for himself. Every man had to take 
the first he laid his hands on, and many of us got 
rusty ones with holes in them. So that about half 
an hour later, when we received barley coffee, and 
all we had to drink it from was the cans, lots of the 
men had to drink theirs almost in one gulp or lose 
half of it. 

The barracks were very dirty and stank horribly, 
and tlie men were still not even half clothed. We 
all looked filthy and smelled that way, and where the 
coal dust had rubbed off we were very pale. And all 
of us were starved-looking. Every time we wanted 
to go to the urinal we had to tell a sentry, and he 
would send us outside to a very shallow trench, dug 
too near the barracks, and not covered at all except 
for naiTow planks thrown across it at intervals. You 
could see that the Huns were not anxious about us 
as far as sanitation went. 

About eleven o'clock that morning the whistle 
blew again, and we came out and were given an 
aluminium spoon and a dish apiece. Then we 
cheered up and saw corned beef and cabbage for 



228 Gunner Depew 

ourselves. An hour later they drilled us through the 
snow to the canteen. When we got there we stood 
in line until at least half-past twelve, and then tlie 
Gemi'ans shouted, " Nichts zu essen." But we did 
not know whait that meant, so we just hung round 
there and waited. Then they started shouting, 
' ' Zuriick ! Zuruck ! ' ' and drove us back to the 
ban*acks. 

Later we heard the words ' ' nichts zu essen ! ' ' 
(or " nix essen," as Mallen said) so often that we 
thought probably they meant " no eats." We had 
our reasons for thinking so, too. Those words, and 
" zuruck " and " 'raus," were practically all we did 
hear, except, of course, various kinds of " schwein- 
hund." 

It was awful to see the men when we got back to 
the barracks. Some of the hoys from the Georgic, 
not much over twelve years old, were almost crazy, 
but even the older men were crying, many of them. 
It was nothing but torture all the time. They 
opened all the windows and doors in the barracks, 
and then we could not heat the room with our 
bodies. When we started to move about to keep 
warm they fired a few shots at us. I do not know 
whether they hit anyone or not ; we had got so that 
we did not pay attention to things like that. But 
it stopped us and we had to stand still. The Huns 
thought we would take the rifles from the sentries 
and use them, too. 



"Pack Up Your Troubles'* 229 

I never saw a yellower crowd of people in my 
life. I do not mean people. I wdsh I could publish 
what I really do mean. 

We had stoves in the barracks, but no coal or 
wood to burn. Many boxes were piled up there, 
but they belonged to the Germans. We would 
have burned them if we could, but the Huns made 
us carry them out across the road. They weighed 
about 150 pounds apiece, and we were so weak that 
it was all two men could do to budge them. And 
we had to carry Ithem ; they would not let us roll 
them. We were so cold and hungry that even that 
exercise did not warm us. 

About 2.30 the whistle blew again, and the Huns 
picked out a few inen and took them down the road. 
We could not understand why, but they came back 
about three o'clock, all of them with bread in their 
arms. They were chewing away at it when they 
had a chance. Whenever the sentries were not 
looking they would bite at it like a fish going after a 
worm. Each man carried five loaves. 

When they reached the barracks the sentries 
made them put the bread on the floor, and then, 
with their bayonets, the sentries cut each loaf once 
do\^Ti the centre lengthwise and four times across, 
which meant ten men to a loaf about the size of an 
ordinary ten-cent loaf in the United States now. 
They gave each of us a piece a Mttle larger than a 
safety-match box. 



230 Gunner Depew 

The bread was hard and dark, and I really think 
they made it from trees. It had just exactly the 
same smell that the dirt around trees has. Mallen 
called it mud as soon as he tried it, and that 
was the name we had for it ever afterwards. 

We filed past the sentries single file to obtain our 
ration of this mud, and there was no chance of get- 
ting in line twice, for we had to keep on filing until 
we were out in the road, and stand there in the snow 
to eat it. We could not go back to the barracks 
until every man had been served. 

Our meals were like this : A can of barley coffee 
in the morning; cabbage soup, so called, at noon; 
a tenth of a loaf of bread at 3 p.m. That was our 
menu day in and day out, the Kaiser's birthday, 
Lincoln's, May Day, or any other time. 

The cabbage soup was a great idea. We called 
it shadow soup, because the boys claimed they made 
it by hanging a cabbage over a barrel of water and 
letting the shadow fall on the water. We pre- 
tended, too, that if you found any cabbage in it 
you could take your dish back for a second helping. 
But I never saw anybody get more than one dishful. 
Truly, it was nothing but spoiled water. 

We tried to go to sleep that night, but there 
were so many sentries around us — and those of us 
who were not sick were wounded — that I do not 
think a man of us really slept. After a wliile I 
asked a sentr^^ if I could go to the convenience, but 



**Pack Up Your Troubles" 231 

for some reason he would not let me. I had differ- 
ent ideas about it, so I stood near the door, and when 
he turned liis back out I went and round the comer 
of the barracks. 

But one of the sentries there saw me and blew his 
whistle, and a guard of eight came up from some- 
where and grabbed me. I tried to explain, but it 
was no use, because every time I said a word it meant 
another clout over the ear, so finally I gave it up. 

Then they escorted me across the road to the 
officers' quarters. There were three officers there, 
and each asked me questions about all kinds of 
things, but never once mentioned my running out 
of the barracks. Then they gave the sentries some 
commands, and foiu* of the sentries took me out and 
over to the barbed wire fence. There they tied me, 
face to the fence, arms over my head, and hands and 
feet lashed to the wire, and with a rope round my 
waist, too. I thought then that my foreboding had 
come true, and that I would be crucified like Murray 
and Brown. 

They posted a sentry there in addition to the 
regular guards, and every time he walked past me he 
would kick me or spit on me, or do both. 

One time he kicked me so hard that a prong of 
the barbed vdre gashed me over the left eye— the 
only one I could see with — and when the blood ran 
into my eye it bhnded me. I thought both eyes 
were gone then, and I hoped they would shoot me. 



232 Gunner Depew 

It seemed to me that I had got my share by this time 
without losing the other eye, and if it was gone, I 
wanted to go, too. 

I could not put up my hand to feel where the 
prong had jabbed me, and it kept on bleeding and 
smarting. I had on practically no clothing, you 
remember. The wounds in my thigh had opened, 
and it was bitterly cold and wind)'. So- you can 
picture to yourself how gay and care-free I was. 

When I had been there for an hour and a half 
they untied me from the wire, and I rolled over on 
my back. They kicked me until I had to stand up, 
but I fell down again, and all the kicking in Ger- 
many could not have brought me to my feet. I was 
just all in. So they blew their whistles and the 
sentries in the barracks awakened two of tlie boys, 
who came and carried me in. 

All the time the sentries were yelling, '' Gott 
strafe England! " and "Schweinhund! " until you 
would have thought they were in a battle. What 
their idea was I do not know. 

The boys had a little water in a can, and one of 
them tore off part of the sleeve of his undershirt. 
So they washed the gash and bandaged me. Be- 
lieve me, I was glad when I could see again. I was 
so tired and worn out that I went to sleep at once, 
and did not wake up until they were giving us our 
barley coffee next morning. 



CHAPTER XIX 

GERMAN PRISON CAMPS 

A FEW days after I had been lashed to the barbed 
wire fence some German officers came to the bar- 
racks, and one of them, who spoke very good Eng- 
lish, said : " All neutrals who were on unarmed 
ships step out." Only a few stepped out. 

Then he called for all the neutrals, and the 
Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Brazilians, and Span- 
iards stepped out. But when I did he said, " No, 
not Americans. Americans are not neutral. 
America supphes our enemies with food and am- 
munitions." He raised his fist and I thought he 
was going to hit me, but instead he gave me a shove 
that caused me to fall and cut my head. Then the 
sentries pushed me over with the British and the 
French. 

After that they took the Norwegians, Swedes, 
and Danes to separate barracks, and gave them 
clothes and beds and the same rations as the German 
soldiers. When I saw this I protested and said I 
was a neutral, too, and ought to have the same treat- 
ment as the Seandinavians. They took me to the 
officers again, kicked me about, and swore at me, and 

P 233 



234 Gunner Depew 

the only ansrwer I got was that America would suffer 
for all she had done for the Allies. Then I was sent 
back to the barracks again. 

Next day about 1 o'clock they took us from the 
baiTacks and drove us though the swamps. The 
men began to fall one by one, some crying or swear- 
ing, but most of them going along without a word. 
Those who went down were smashed on the head 
with rifle butts or belts. 

Finally we arrived at a little railroad station, and 
had to stand in the snow for over an hour while the 
engine ran up and down the tracks hooking on cars. 
When at length we got in the cars we were frozen 
stiff. I could hardly walk, and some of the boys 
simply could not move without intense pain. 

They loaded twelve men into each compartment, 
and detailed a guard of six men to each car. The 
windows were all smashed, and everything about the 
cars were dirty. 

The sentries in our compartment took some bread 
out of their knapsacks and began to nibble it. They 
also had tobacco* — plenty of it. And all this they did 
just to torture us. They could hardly eat the bread, 
because they were not hungry at all. When they 
had showed it to us and pretended to eat it, and had 
laughed all they wanted to, they put it back in their 
knapsacks and started smoking. 

The train stopj)ed at every little station along 
the line, and the engineer always started up again 



German Prison Camps 235 

with awful jerks. Sometimes he would jerk the whole 
train two or three times before he got going again, 
and, from what the sentries said, we thought he was 
doing it on purpose. You would not think the 
Huns would go to all that trouble to annoy us, 
but it is a fact that they think of everything they 
can to torture one. 

Finally the train stopped at a town named Alt- 
Damm, and there was a mob of women and children 
around, as usual, ready for us with bricks and spit. 
They stoned us through the car windows, and 
laughed and jeered at us, but by this time we were 
so used to it that we did not mind much. Only, 
every now and then some fellow would get more than 
he could stand, and either talk back or make a pass 
at somebody. Then he would have it — either a 
bayonet through the arm or leg, or a bash on the 
head with a gun butt. 

For the last few stations before we reached Alt- 
Damm the engineer had not jerked the train much, 
and some of the men had climbed up on the little 
shelves in the cars, which are meant for baggage, 
but which the men were sleeping on. As we pulled 
out of Alt-Damm the train gave a worse jerk than 
usual, and almost all the men fell down to the floor. 
One of them broke his arm at the elbow. These 
shelves are just about as roomy as the hammocks on 
Pullman cars, so you can see exactly what and how 
much we had in the way of comfort when such small 



236 Gunner Depew 

shelves looked as good to the men as bunks. When 
the sentries learned that this man had broken his 
anil they laughed consimiedly, and one of them 
went forward to tell the driver. Then we were sure 
he had done it on purpose. We pulled a strap from 
one of the car windows and tightened up the broken 
arm, but the man was in great pain, and became 
delirious shortly afterwards. 

When we had pulled up at the station in Stettin 
one of the men jumped out of the car window to get 
some snow to eat, because we had received absolutely 
no water, to say nothing of food, on the way. A 
sentry saw him as lie climbed out of the car window 
but, being yellow, did not go for him, and just stood 
where he was and yelled until four or five more Huns 
came up. The man kept going until he reached the 
snow. While they were still running towards him 
he ate several mouthfuls and made snowballs to carry 
back to the resJt of us. 

When the men in the ears saw the sentries going 
towards him they all tried to get out of the window 
at once, and there would have been a great little 
argument, because the men were desj>eTate, and 
these Huns, like the rest of them, were yellow. But 
the man started back to the car as fast as he could 
go, and the other men were stuck in the windows 
and had to get back into the car to let him in. The 
Huns got him just as he was about to climb back 
through the window, and bayoneted him twice in 



German Prison Gamps 237 

the arm. But he held on to the snowballs and 
divided them among us. The sentries came into 
the car -and took the snow from us, though, and 
threw it away. 

After an eighteen hours' ride, without food or 
drink, ,we arrived at Neustrelitz. It was raining as 
we pulled in. As we went up the grade to the town 
we could see lights about a mile away, and we con- 
cluded that that was the camp. The rain stopped 
and w^e remained in the cars for some time. Then 
after a while we knew our new guards were coming ; 
long before we could see them, we could hear the 
racket they made. Somehow, a German cannot do 
anything sliip-shape and neatly, but always has to 
have a lot of noise and running around /and general 
confusion. Four-footed swine are more orderly in 
their habits than the Huns. 

When they came up we were driven from the 
cars and marched up the road to the camp. When 
we got near the German barracks we were halted 
and counted again, and made to stand there, 
shivering like leaves, for at least an hour after 
they had finished counting us. At last they 
placed us in barracks, and those who could went 
to sleep. 

There were about forty barracks in the Limey 
group at Neustrelitz and two large Zeppelin sheds. 
The barracks were just like those at Swinemiinde — 
at least, they were no better. Along the sides of 



238 Gunner Depew 

the rooms were long shelves or benches, and every 
three feet were boards set in grooves. The shelves 
were what we had to sleep on, and the boards in 
the grooves divided them up so that only a certain 
number of men could use each bench. 

The following morning we nearly dropped dead 
when the Huns pulled in a large wagon full of cloth- 
ing. We thought we never would have anything to 
wear but our underclothes. They issued to each 
man a pair of trousers, thin model, a thin coat about 
like the seersucker or Indian cotton coats some 
people wear in the summer, an overcoat about as 
,warm as if it had been made of cigarette papers, a 
skull cap and a pair of s/hoes, which were a day's 
labour to carry around. Not one of us received 
socks, shirts, or underwear. 

The toe was cut from the right shoe of the pair 
I received, and as my wounds were in the right thigh 
and my leg had stiffened considerably and become 
very sore, I got pretty anxious, because there was 
nothing but slush under foot, and I was afraid I 
migfct lose my leg. So I thought that itf I went to 
the commander and complained I might get a good 
shoe. I hesitated about it at first, but finally made 
up my mind and went to see him. 

I told him that it was slushy outside, and that 
the water ran through the hole in my shoe and made 
it bad for my whole leg, which was wounded. He 
examined the shoe, and looked at the open toe for 



German Prison Camps 239 

some time, and I thought he was going to put up an 
argument .but would give in finally. 

Then he asked me what I wanted. I thought 
that was plain enough to see, but I said just ay 
easily as I could that I wanted a shoe without a hok 
in the toe. 

"So the water runs into it, does it? " he said. 
" Well, my advice to you is to get a knife, cut a 
hole in the heel, and let the water out." All the 
other swine in the room laughed very loud at this, 
and I guess this Fritz thought he was a great 
comedian. But somehow or other, it did not strike 
me as so funny that I should laugh, and I was able, 
after quite a struggle, to keep from even snickering. 
It was a harder struggle than that to keep from doing 
something else, though ! 

Our meals were about the same as at Swine- 
miinde — the bread was just as muddy, the barley 
coffee just as rank, and the soup just as cabbageless. 
The second morning after we had had our barley 
coffee one of the sentries came to our barracks, 
which was number 7-B, and gave each of us an en- 
velope and a sheet of writing-paper. Then he told 
us to write to anybody we wanted to, after which he 
chalked on the door in big letters — 

KRIEGSGEFANGENENLAGER 

and told us it was the return addi-ess. We were all 
surprised, and asked each other where on earth we 



240 Gunner Depew 

were, because we liad thought we were in Neustrelitz. 
After a while, we learned that it means " Prisoner- 
of- War- Camp." At first, however, many of us 
thought it was the name of the town, and we took to 
calling it The Brewery, because the name ended in 
Lager. Whatever beer was brewed there was not 
for us, though. 

I noticed that all the time he was writing the 
word and giving us the stationery, the sentry was 
laughing and having a great time with his own little 
self, but I supposed he was just acting German, and 
that nothing was important about it. 

We were all mortally anxious to get a chance to 
let our people know where we were, and each man 
thought a long time about what he would say, and 
whom he would write to, before he ever started to 
write. Each man wanted to say all he could in the 
smlall space he had, and to let his friends know how 
badly the Huns were treating us without saying it in 
so many words, because we knew the Germans would 
censor the letters, and it would go hard with anyone 
who complained much. So most of the men said 
they were having a great time and were treated very 
well, and spread it on so thick that their friends 
would infer that they were lying because they had to. 

One fellow had a better idea than that, though. 
He had been in jail in Portsmouth, in England, for 
three mionths, for assaulting a constable, and he had 
had a pretty rough time. So he wrote a pal of his 



German Prison Camps 241 

that he had been captured by the Germans, but that 
everything was going along pretty well. In fact, he 
said, the only other trip he had ever been on, where 
he had a better time, was the three months' vacation 
he had spent in Portsmouth two years before, which 
he thought the friend would remember. He said 
that trip was better than this one, so the friend could 
conclude for himself how pleasant this one was. 
Everybody thought this was a great idea, but unfor- 
tunately not all of us had been in jail, so we could 
not all use it. Which was just as well, however, 
because the Germans would be suspicious if all of us 
compared this vacation with others. 

Some of the men had nobody they could write to, 
and others did not know their friends' addresses, so 
they would 'write letters to friends of the other men, 
and sign them with their mates' nicknames. In this 
way M'allen got letters written to three people he 
knew, one signed Mallen, another Mai Brown or 
Black or Smith, and the third, " Swipe " Robinson 
or Jones. " Swipe " was a nickname that he said he 
used to have. He told about his monocle and asked 
for a whole pair of glasses in the first letter, for 
tobacco in the second, and something else in the 
third, and, whatever supplies the letters fetched, he 
promised to give to the men who let him use their 
last names and their stJitionery. 

As soon as a man had finished his letter, he had 
to go out to the centre of the camp, where they had 



242 Gunner Depew 

built a raised platfomi. There the sentries took the 
letters, and the men formed round the square. There 
were officers on the platfonn reading the letters. We 
thought they read them there in the open, before us, 
so that we would know they were not tampering 
with the letters, and we believed the heavens would 
fall if they were getting so unkultured as that. 

By and by all the men had finished their letters 
and turned them over to the officers, who read them. 
And then we saw why the sentry laughed. 

The officers tore up every one of the letters. 
They were anxious that we would see them do it, so 
that none of us might have any hope that our friends 
would get word. 

But we said io ourselves that, if it was informa- 
tion they wanted, they had as much as was good for 
them, which was none at all, because I do not think 
one letter in the lot had a single word of truth in it. 
But we were very angry and pretty low after that, 
because it showed the Huns still had plenty of kultur 
left, after all, and we knew there was rough treat- 
ment ahead of us. Also, some of the men were sore 
because they had wasted their time thinking up dif- 
ferent ways of hinting to their friends about the real 
state of a^airs, and all for nothing. Mallen was 
about ready to tear his hair out. Why they should 
worry about time, I could not see. Time was the 
only thing we had plenty of and I, for one, thought 
we were going to have still more of it. 



German Prison Camps 243 

Going back to the barracks we tried to sing 
''Pack up your troubles," but there was not much 
pep in it. We wxre not downhearted, though : at 
least, we said we were not. 

I saw L29, a, very large Zeppelin, flying low over 
the field at Neustrelitz, and I would have liked to 
have a crack at it with an anti-aircraft gun. It made 
an awful racket, like everything else German, and 
one of the sentries was very much to the cheer-oh 
when he saw and heard it. He seemed to think it 
was great stuff. He said it would give somebody 
hell-for-breakfast, or words to that effect, and 
finished up by saying, " By and by, England 
'kaput,'" which means "ruined." But I have 
learned since that L29 was brought down by the 
Englis/li before it " kaputted " them very much. 



CHAPTER XX 

KULTUR — THE REAL STUFF 

Neustrelitz was mainly for Russian prisoners, and 
neither British nor French soldiers were interned 
there — only sailors of the merchant marine such as 
the men I was with. The Russians were given far 
worse treatment than any other prisoners. This was 
for two reasons, as near as I could make out. One 
was that the Russian would stand almost anything, 
whereas the Britislh and French could only be goaded 
to a certain point, and beyond that lay trouble. 
I'he other reason was that the Russians sent Ger- 
man prisotners to Siberia or, at least, so the Huns 
thought, and Fritz hates the cold. So, hating the 
Russians, and realising that they were used to being 
under-dogs, Fritz picked on them and bullied them 
in a way that the rest of us would not have s/tood. 
We would have rushed them and gone West with 
bayonets first. 

One of the Russians told me that at the begin- 
ning of the war there were no barracks at Neu- 
strelitz. There were only barbed wire entanglements 
surrounded by a high fence, and into this bare place 
thousands of prisoners were driven. All their 

244 



Kultur— the Real Stuff 245 

clothes were taken from them, and they were com- 
pelled to sleep on the ground without any covering. 
After they had been li\ing in this way for quite a 
while, the Germans took them into the forest, where 
they cut down trees, hauled them to the camp and 
built the barracks we were now in. 

He said that in the early days, while they were 
at work on the barracks, the Germans put them in 
stables from which manure had been removed, and 
that whenever it rained the floors would be nothing 
but stinking pools. While some were at work the 
others had to stay in these stables, and all had to sleep 
in them. They also dug holes in the ground about 
six feet deep for protection against the weather. 
The Germans would not let them have any tools, so 
they used pieces of wood and in many cases only 
their hands. The dug-outs frequently caved in on 
them. 

The barracks were made of spruce, and were 
about ninety feet long and twenty -five feet wide, 
and you can take it from me that, as carpenters, 
whoever made them were fine farmers. There were 
cracks in them which you could have driven an auto- 
mobile through. When we were there, each bar- 
racks had a stove in the centre, a good stove and a 
big one, but at first it was of no use to us, because 
the Huns would not give us coal or wood for it. 
But after shivering for a while we began rip- 
ping the boards out of the barracks, and taking 



246 ^ Gunner Depew 

the dividing baards from the benches that we used for 
beds. 

Later, they giave each of us a mattress filled with 
wood shavings, and a blanket that was about as warm 
as a pane of glass. The mattresses were placed on 
the ground in the barracks, which were very damp, 
and after three or four days the shavings would 
begin to rot and the mattress to stink. In order to 
keep warm we slept as closely together as we could, 
which caused our various diseases to spread rapidly. 

When we were receiving our rations the sentries 
would offer us an extra ration if we would take a 
lash from their belts. We were so hungry that 
miany and many a man would go up and take a 
whack on any part of his body from the heavy leather 
belts with brass tongue and buckle, just to get a little 
more "shadow" soup, or barley coffee, or mud 
bread. 

One morning the sentries picked out ten men 
from our barracks, of whom I was one, and conveyed 
us to a field near the canteen. There was a large 
tank in the field and we had to p*mip water into it. 
It was very cold, and we were weak and sick, so we 
would fall one after another, not caring whether we 
ever got up or not. Fritz would smash those who 
fell with his rifle butt. We asked for gloves, because 
our hands were freezing, but all we got was 
"Nichts." 

After we had been there for about an hour and a 



Kultur— the Real Stuff 247 

half, one of our men became very sick, so that I 
thought he was going to die and, when he fell over, 
I reported it to a sentry. The sentry came over, saw 
him lying in the snow, yelled, " Schwein, nicht 
krank! " (sick), grabbed him by the shoulder, and 
pulled him all the way across the field to the office 
of the camp commander. Then he was placed in the 
guard-house, w^here he remained for two days. The 
next thing we knew the Russians had been ordered 
to make a box, and were being marched to the 
guard-house to put him in it and bury him. 

I went over to the guard-house at the time, and 
struck up quite a friendship with one of the Russians. 
I would talk to him in Russian, and he would try 
to reply in English, because he wanted to practise 
it. After a while we would exchange parts — I would 
talk in English, and he in Russian, so that we would 
also get practice in understanding each other's 
language. 

He said he did not know how long he had been 
there, but that it had been long enough, and also 
that when he was taken prisoner he was transferred 
from camp to ca/mp so many times that he had lost 
count, and that each time he and the other prisoners 
were without food on the journeys, which they had 
to miake on foot. He said that some of the marches 
had been six days long and one was nine, and that 
they were not given any food at all on the way, but 
had to live on whatever weeds or vegetables they 



248 Gunner Depew 

ooiild find as they went along, or take when the 
gmards were not looking. Whenever a prisoner was 
caught taking food from a field he was killed im- 
mediately. He said that those who could not hold 
out would fall on the road, and that the next guard 
who came along on the flank of the column would 
simply stick his bayonet into the prisoner and leave 
him there. 

There were two brothers in the party of prisoners, 
and when one of them became very sick and weak 
the other carried him on his shoulder. A guard saw 
it and killed them both with his rifle butt. 

Another thing at Neustrelitz that was very hard 
to stand was the pretty habit the Huns had of com- 
ing up to the barbed wire and teasing us as though 
we were wild animals in a cage. Sometimes there 
would be crowds of people lined along the wire 
throwing things at us, and spitting, and having a 
great time generally. It was harder than ever when 
a family party would arrive, \yith Vater und Mutter, 
and maybe Grosvater und Grosmutter and all the 
little Boche children, because, as you probably 
know, the Germans take food with them whenever 
they go on a party, no matter what kind, and they 
would stand there and stare at us like the boobies 
they were, eating all the time — and we so hungry 
that we could have eaten ourselves almost. After 
they had stared a while, they would begin to feel 
more at home, and then would start the throwing 



Kultur— the Real Stuff 249 

and spitting and the " schweinhimd " concert. 
Probably, when they got home, they would strike a 
medal for themselves in honour of the visit. Wear- 
ing medals for sinking the Lusitania, and for playing 
hell generally, is the favourite German exercise. 

I never spoke to one of our boys in the prison 
camps who did not hate the Hun women worse than 
the men. We heard there was a law in Germany 
against women weaiing corsets, and Mallen said he 
thought that would start a revolution, because if any 
women ever needed corsets it was German women. 

We had one bucket in each barracks, and as these 
buckets were used for both washing and drinking, 
they were always dirty. We boiled the water when 
we washed the clothes, to get rid of the cooties, and 
that left a settling in it that looked just like red lead. 
We had to get the water from a hydrant outside of 
the barracks, and for a while we drank it. But after 
several of the boys had gone West and we could not 
understand whj^ a man told us he thought the w^ater 
was poisoned, and a Russian doctor, who was a 
prisoner, passed the word about it also. So, after 
that, very few of us drank water from the hydrant. 
I was scared stiff at first, because I had had some 
of the water, but after that I did not touch that 
brand. 

It was a good thing for us that there was always 
plenty of snow, and even luckier that the Huns did 
not shoot us for eating it. It was about the only 
Q 



250 Gunner Depew 

thing they did not deprive us of — it was not 
" verboten." 

I thought I knew what tough cooties were, in 
the trenches, but tliese were regular mollycoddles 
compared with the pets we had in the prison campis. 
After we boiled our clothes we would be free from 
them for not more than two hours, and then they 
would come back, with reinforcements, thirsting for 
vengeance. 

The men would sit in the barracks with their 
shirts off searching for the cooties, and they got to 
calling it "reading the news." It looked just as 
though they were reading a newspaper. It is not a 
very nice thing to talk about, but you can imagine 
how we swarmed with lice when I tell you that we 
even had them on our shoestrings and in our eye- 
brows. 

It is real labour " reading the news," and I got 
sick of doing it, so I invented a way of getting rid 
of my little friends. It was bitterly cold at night, 
so I soaked my shirt in the water-bucket and then 
hung it on the barbed wire, thinking I could freeze 
them out. Next morning it was frozen stiff and hard 
as a rock, and I took it back in the barracks and 
dried it. It took a long time, and I did not see a 
single cootie. So I was all swelled up about it, and I 
told (the other fellowis I had done the trick at last, 
and the boys declared that they would haA^e the 
barbed wire covered with shirts every night, 



Kultur— the Real Stuff 251 

But when my shirt was dry and I had put it on, 
I found out ithat you cannot freeze them. And how 
they did go for me ! I think they were hungrier 
than ever, because they had not had anything to 
nibble at all night, and the fresh air gave them an 
extra appetite. So no more shirts were hung out on 
the barbed wire. 

The camp at Neustrelitz was surrounded by big 
dogs, which were kept just outside the barbed wire. 
We had them going all the time. Every now and 
then, some fellow would throw a stone at ,a dog and 
it would make an awful racket, and the next thing 
we knew was Fritz coming like a shot, with musket 
at his hip, just as they carry them in a charge, and 
blowing whistles at each other until they were blue 
in the face. Whenever they thought someone was 
escaping, they ran twice as fast as I ever saw them 
run, except when the Foreign Legion was on their 
heels at Dixmude. 

When they got up to the dogs, they would first 
talk to them and then kick them, and after that 
they would rest their rifles on the wire and yell 
"Zm-iick! " at us. We all enjoyed this innocent 
pastime very mujch and were glad they had the dogs. 

There were some things the Huns did that you 
could not explain. For instance, one of the Rus- 
sians walked out of the canteen as we were passing, 
and we heard a bang ! and the Russian dropped down 
and went West. Now, he had not done anytliing. 



252 Gunner Depew 

and the other Russdans said he had behaved himself, 
worked hard and never been in trouble. They just 
killed him and that was all. But not one of us could 
discover why. 

After we had been at Neustrelitz for three weeks 
they drove us out of the camp to a railway station, 
and stood us in the snow for four hours waiting for 
the train. We were exhausted, and began falling, 
one by one, and each time one of us fell the sentries 
would yell, " Nicht krank ! " and give us the rifle 
butt. We liad our choice of standing up and dying 
or falling down and being killed, and it was a fine 
choice to have to make. 

The cars finally drew up, and as usual, the win- 
dows were smashed, the doors open, and the com- 
partments just packed with snow. When we saw 
this we knew we were going to have even worse 
treatment, and many of us wanted to die. At 
Neustrelitz it had not been unusual for some of the 
men to tell the Germans to shoot them, but they 
never would when we wished them to, and it seemed 
as though it was always the man who wanted to live 
who did get it and went West. 

But when they were pushing us into the cars one 
of the men had all he could stand, so he got out of 
the car they had just put him in, and began to dance 
round so that they could not help seeing him. A 
sentry yelled at him and started over to where he was 
jumping about, and the Limey yelled back, " Who 



Kultur— the Real Stuff 253 

the hell do you think you are, you dirty German 

! " and we thought he surely would get his. 

But instead of plugging him the sentry took him 
by the arm and put him in his own compartment, 
and late tliat night gave him a cigarette stub. So, 
you see, when you want to die, they will not kill 
you. 

However, all of us nearly got killed when we 
reached Wittenberg. When the train stopped there 
we saw a big wagon-load of sliced bread on the 
s*bation platform and we all stared at it. We stood it 
as long as we could, and then we made a rush for it. 
But when we got nearer we saw that there were four 
sentries guarding it and four women issuing it out 
to the German soldiers. They would not give us 
any, of course. 

So we sfto-od round and watched the Huns eat it, 
while they and the women laughed at us, and pre- 
tended that they were starving, and would groan 
and rub their stomachs and say ' ' Nichts zu essen ' ' 
to each other, and then grab a big hunk of bread 
and eat it. What we did not say to them was very 
little indeed. We were certainly wild if any men 
ever were. 

Then some of us said we were going to get some 
of that bread, if we went West for it. So we started 
a fight, and while they were attending to some of us 
the others grabbed and hid all the bread they could. 
They drove us back into the cars, and we were just 



254 Gunner Depew 

starting to share the bread when they caught us with 
it and took it away. We were wilder than ever 
then, but we could not do anything. 

It gdt colder after we left Wittenberg, and the 
snow blew into the cars through the windows and 
doors until we were afraid to sleep for fear of freez- 
ing. It was Ithe worst night I have ever seen, and 
the coial bunkers on the Yarrowdale seemed like a 
palace compared with the compartments, because we 
could at least move a,bout in the ship, while in the 
train we coiiM not move at all, and were packed so 
closely that we could not even stretch our legs and 
arms. Some of the men did die, but not in my 
compartment, though most of us were frost-bitten 
about the face. 

We thoughtt that night would never end, but day 
came finally, and though it seemed to get colder and 
colder, we did not mind it so much. At about eleven 
that morning we arrived at a place called Minden and 
saw a prison camp there — ^just a stockade neai' the 
tracks with the boys out in the open. We waved to 
them and they waved back and gave acheer-ohortw^o. 
We felt sorry for them, because we knew we were 
not going ito that eamp, and from what little we saw 
we knew we could not be going to a worse place than 
they were in. I shall never forget Minden, because 
it was here that I received the only cigarette I had 
while I was in Germany. 

Minden is quite a railway centre, I guess, and 



Kultur— the Real Stuff 255 

when we pulled inito the depot we saw many troops 
going to the front or coming back. As at all import- 
ant Gennan railway stations, there was a Red Cross 
booth on the platfonn, with girls handing out barley 
coffee and other things to the Hun soldiers. I saw 
a large shanty on the platform with a Red Cross 
painted over the door. I saw the girls giving barley 
coffee to the soldiers, and I thought I would have a 
try at it and at least be polite enough to give the girls 
a ichance of refusing me. I was refused all right, 
but they were so nasty about it that I lowered my 
head and uttered a few words. I do not remember 
just what they were, but they were not very com- 
plimentiary, I guess. Anyhow, I did not think any- 
one near there understood English, but evidently 
someone heard me who did, for I got an awful boot 
that landed me ten or twelve feet away. I fell on my 
hands and knees, and about a yard away I saw a 
cigareltte stub. I dived for it like a man falling on a 
football, and when I eame up that stub was safely in 
my pocket. And it stayed there until I reached 
Diilmen and had a chance to light it beliind the bar- 
racks. If any of the other men had smelled real 
tobacco they would probably have murd^ed me — 
and I could not have blamed them. 

That was the first and the last cigarette I got in 
Germany, and you can believe me when I say that 
I enjoyed it. There was not much to it, but I 
smoked it until there was not enough left to hold in 



256 Gunner Depew 

my mouth, and then I used what was left and mixed 
it with the bark that we made cigarettes out of. In- 
cidentally, this bark was great stuff. I do not know 
what kind of tree it came from, but it served the 
purpose. Whenever a fellow wanted to smoke and 
lit one of these cigarettes, a few puffs were enough. 
He did not want to smoke again for some time after- 
wards, nor, as like as not, did he want to eat either. 
They were therefore very valuable. 

It is very hard to get matches in the camps, and 
when any prisoner does get hold of one it is made to 
last a long time. Here is how we made a match last. 
Someone gives up the sleeve of his coat, and the 
match is carefully lit, and the sleeve burned to a 
crisp. Then we take a button from our coats — the 
buttons are brass with two holes in them — pass a shoe 
string through the holes, knot the ends, and with the 
button in the centre of the string, buzz it around as 
you have seen boys do, with the string over both 
hands, moving the hands togetlier and apart until the 
button revolves very fast. 

We then put a piece of flint against the crisped 
cloth, and buzz the button against it until a spark 
makes the crisp glow, and from this we would light 
our bark cigarettes. I do not think any man in the 
worid could inhale one of these bark cigarettes : 
some of us tried and went right to sleep. 



CHAPTER XXI 

A VISIT FROM MR. GERARD 

We arrived at Dulmen, in Westphalia, late at night. 
We were dragged out of the carriages, mustered on 
the platform, counted, then driven through the 
streets. In spite of the late hour, the streets were 
pretty w^ell filled with people, and they zigzagged us 
through all the streets they could, so that the people 
would have a chance to see the crazy men, as they 
called us. Most of the crowd were women, and as 
soon as they saw us coming they began singing the 
" Watch on the Rhine," or some other German 
song, and it was funny to see windows opening and 
fat fraus, with nightcaps on, sticking their heads 
out. They would give us a quick glance, and then 
pipe up like a boatswain: " Schweinhund " — 
" Vaterland "— " Wacht am Rhein "— all kinds of 
things and all mixed up. 

So we gave them " Tipperary " and " Pack up 
Your Troubles," and showed them how to sing. Our 
guards had no ear for music and tried to stop us, but 
though the)^ knocked several men down, we did not 
stop until we had finished the song. Then, after we 
had admitted to each other that we were not down- 
hearted, we shut up. 

257 



258 Gunner Depew 

We would have done so, anyway, because by this 
time we were on the outskirts of the town and needed 
all the breath we had. The road we were on was 
one long sheet of ice, and we could hardly walk more 
than four steps witliout slipping and falling. My 
shoes had wooden soles, and it was just one bang after 
another, with the ice and myself trying to see which 
could hit the hardest. Every time we fell — smash ! 
came a rifle over the back. 

I was getting pretty tired, so I said to some of 
the fellows that I w^as going to sit down and rest, and 
they said they would be damned if they did not do 
so also. So we dropped out and waited until the 
guards behind had about caught up with us, and then 
we went on again. We did this several times until 
they cottoned to the idea, and we could not do it 
any more. 

Farther up the road I fell again, and this time I 
thought I did not care what happened, so I just sat 
there until Fritz came up. But instead of giving me 
the biayonet he made me take off my shoes — that is, 
he took them off with a knife through the strings — 
and I had to walk the rest of the way barefoot. It 
was labout four miles altogether from the station to 
the camp. ' , 

When we got near the camp all the boys came 
out of the barracks and lined up along the barbed 
wire, and yelled us a welcome. We asked them if 
they were downhearted, and they said no, and we 



A Visit from Mr. Gerard 259 

said we were not either. We could hardly see them, 
but they began yelling again when we got nearer, 
and asked us, " Is there anyone there from Queens- 
town?" and then Hull, and Portsmouth, and Dover, 
and Toronto and a lot of other places. 

I did not pay much attention until I heard, 
"Any Americans there?" and I yelled back, "Yes, 
where are you? " 

"Barrack 6-B, Gruppe 3." 

"Where from?" I yelled. 

"Boston. Where 're you from?" 

" The U.S.A. and Atlantic ports. See you 
later." 

So next morning I went over to his barracks and 
asked for the Yank. They pointed liim out to me, 
where he was lying on the floor. I went over and 
lay down with him, and we had quite a talk. I ^vill 
not give his name for certain reasons. 

He had received several wounds at the time he 
was taken prisoner. He had been in the Canadian 
service for two years. We used to talk about New 
York and Boston and the different places we knew 
in both towns, and we also talked a lot about the rot- 
ten treatmenit we were receiving, and tried to cook 
up some plan of escape. But every one we could 
think of had been used by someone else, and either 
had failed, or the Huns had fixed it so the plan could 
not be tried again. We devised some pretty wild 
schemes at that. Altogeth<^r, we became great pals. 



26o Gunner Depew 

and were together as much as possible at Diilmen. 
The day I left the camp he gave me a ring made from 
a shell, and told me to get it safely back to the States, 
but someone stole it at Brandenburg. 

One da}^ while I was in liis barracks an English- 
man stepped out of the door for some reason or other, 
and though he did not say a word to Fritz, in two 
minutes he was dead, in cold blood. We never knew 
why they killed him. 

At Swinemiinde and Neustrelitz I must admit that 
the Germans had us pretty badly cornered, but at 
Diilmen the prisoners were entirely different. 
Dulmen was the receiving camp for the whole 
western front, and the prisoners there got to be 
pretty tough eggs, as far as Fritz was concerned, be- 
fore they had been in camp many days. They 
thought nothing of picking a fight with a sentry and 
giving him a good battle, even though he was armed 
with rifle and bayonet. We soon learned thait unless 
his pals are near a German will not stand by his 
arguments with his fists. In other words, if he can 
out-talk you he will not hesitate to do so, but if he 
cannot, it is a ease of " Here comes Heinie going 
back." 

The Russian prisoners at Dulmen were certainly 
a miserable-looking lot. They spent most of their 
time wandering round the Russian barracks, hunting 
for rotten potato peeHngs and other garbage, which 
they would eat. When they saw Fritz throw out 



A Visit from Mr. Gerard 261 

his swill they would dive right through the barbed 
wire one after another, and their hands and face and 
clothes were always torn. It was unhealthy to stand 
between the Russians and their garbage prey — they 
were so speedy that nothing stopped them. 

One morning, just after barley-coffee time, I 
came out of the barracks and saw an Australian 
arguing with the sentry. I was not only curious, 
but anxious to be a good citizen, as they say, so 
I went up and lent them an ear. The Australian 
had asked Fritz w^at had been done with the flag 
that the Huns were going to fly from the Eiffel 
Tower in Paris. 

That was too deep for Fritz, so the Australian 
answered it for himself. " Don't you know, Fritz? 
Well, we have no blankets, you know." 

Still the sentry did not see it. So the Australian 
carefully explained to me — so that Fritz could hear 
— that the Germans had no blankets and were using 
the flag to wrap their cold feet in. 

This started a fight, of course — the German idea 
of a fight, that is. The sentry, being a very brave 
man for a Hun, blew his whisrtle very loudly and 
sentries came from all directions. So we retreated 
to the Australian's barracks, and there I found a 
second American in the camp. He was a barber 
named Stimson, from one of the western States. 
He had heard I was there as well as the Boston man 
in the Canadian service, but he had been too sick 



262 Gunner Depew 

to look us up, and, in fact, did not give a damn 
what happened, he was so miserable. He had been 
wounded several times, and died in a day or two. 
I never knew bow be came to be in the Australian 
service. 

Those two and myself were the only Americans 
I knew of in this prison camp — whether in Cana- 
dian, Australian, or French service. The other two 
bad been captured in uniform, so there was no 
chance of their being released. 

Diilmen was very near the Dutch border, and 
as it was quite easy to get out of the camp, attempts 
at escape were frequent. Mo:^ of those who ran 
away were brought back, though. The Germans 
were so lenient with those who tried to run away 
that I almost thought they were encouraging them. 
One chap was doing his 'ten days in the guard-house 
for the sixth time while I was It'here — that is, he 
had just about completed bis period of detention. 
He claimed that the sixth time he had really got 
across the border ; he swore it was the truth. I am 
not so sure myself. He got away for ithe seventh 
time while I was at Diilmen and was not returned. 

Ten days in the guard-house is not such a light 
punishment, after all, because water three times a 
day is all the prisoner receives during that time, 
but it lis pretty mild compared with some of the 
things the Huns do. 

One morning I thought for sure I was going 



A Visit from Mr. Gerard 263 

queer. I was just fed up with the ^Vhole business, 
and sick of doing nothing but suffer. So I strolled 
along, sticking my head into barracks dolors, here 
trying to have a talk and there trying to pick a 
fight. It was all one to me : I just wanted some- 
thing to do. I found what I wanted all right. 

I had quite a talk with a sentry in front of a 
barracks. It must have lasted three-quarters of an 
hour. He did not know what I was calling him, 
and I did not know w^hat he was calling me. I could 
have handled him all right, but another sentry came 
up on my blind side and grabbed me, and the talk 
was over. 

They dragged me to the commander of the camp 
and he instructed them to give me a bath. So they 
took me to the bath-house, where I was stripped 
and lashed. All the time they were whipping me 
I was thinking what a joke it was on me, because 
I had been looking for excitement and had got more 
than I wanted, so I laughed, and the Huns thought 
I was crazy, sure. 

Now, the Germans have a kind of blue salve, of 
the order of soft soap. When you rub it on your 
face and take it off with a stick, it gives you as close 
a shave as any barber could. So they smeared it all 
over me, and I quit laug'hing. It felt like lye, where 
I had been lashed. I was dumped into a vat of hot 
water, and at the same time my clothes were given 
a boiling, which w^as good for them. 



264 Gunner Depew 

W'hen I came out of that bath there was not a 
hair on my body except my head. I was just Hke 
a peeled onion, but far weaker. And how I did itch 
when the hair began to sprout again a few days later ! 
It was a torture that lasted, I can tell you. 

Then I was forced into my wet clothes and 
marched back to barracks. This bath and the stroll 
through the snow in wet clothes about did for me. 
Nowadays, w^hen I sit in a draught (for a second and 
catch cold, I wonder that I am still alive to catch it. 
Having gone through Dixmude, and the Dardan- 
elles, and the sinking of the Georgic, and four Ger- 
man prison camps, and a few other things — I shall 
probably trip over a hole in a church carpet and 
break my neck. That would be my luck. 

The Russians were very fond of this blue salve. 
As they did most of the cooking, and were near the 
bath-houses, they had a fine opportunity for stealing 
lots of it. What they used it for I do not know, 
but their barracks were full of it. 

There were all the diseases you can think of in 
this camp, including black cholera and typhus, and 
somebody was always dying. We had to make 
coffins from any wood we could find. So it was not 
long before we were using the dividing boards from 
our bunks, pieces of flooring, and, in fact, the walls 
of the barracks. The officers were quartered in 
corrugated iron barracks, so they had to borrow wood 
from us for their coffins. We would make the 



A Visit from Mr. Gerard 265 

box and put the body in it, give it as much service 
as we could in the ways of prayers and hymns, and 
put it away in a hole near the barracks. Fatalities 
were so numerous that a single death passed un- 
noticed. 

One morning the German sentries came to our 
barracks — they never came singly — and told us that 
an officer was going to review the prisoners, and 
ordered us to muster up, which we did. I was the 
last man out of the barracks, and on account of my 
wounds I was slower than the rest. 
' You understand, I had had no medical treatment 
except crepe-paper bandages and water ; my wounds 
had been opened by swimming from the Georgic 
to the Moewe, and they had been put in terrible 
shape in the coal bunkers. On account of the poor 
food and lack of treatment they had not even 
started to heal. Incidentally, the only cloth 
bandages that any of us had were what we would 
tear from our clothes, and I have seen men pick up 
an old dirty rag that someone else had had round his 
wound for a long time, and bandage his own wounds 
with it. 

So it was all I could do to drag myself along. 
The officer noticed that I was out of Hne, and im- 
mediately asked my name and nationality. When 
he heard "American," he could not say enough 
things about us, and called me all the swine names he 
could think of. 

R 



266 Gunner Depew 

I was pretty thin ait this time and getting thinner, 
so I reasoned I might just as well have it out before 
I starved. Besides, I thought, he ought to know 
that, in the States, we are not used to being bawled 
at by Gennan swine. 

S'o I told him so. And I said that he should not 
decry Americans, because America was neutral. He 
then sa^id that as America supplied food and muni- 
tions to the Allies she was no better than the rest. 

Then I said : " Do you remember the Deutsch- 
land ? When she entered Baltimore and New Lon- 
don she got all the cargo she wanted, didn't she? " 

"Yes." 

" Well, if you send over your merchant marine 
they will get the same." For that answer he gave 
me ten days in the guard-house. He did not like to 
be reminded that their merchant marine had to dive 
under to keep away from the Limeys. 

I admit I was pretty saucy to this officer, but who 
would not be when a raw German swine officer 
sneered at him ? 

The only fun I had in the camp was while I was 
in the guard-house. There were Belgians, French- 
men, Russians, Montenegrins, Limeys, Australians, 
Turcos, and Canadians all talking at once and trying 
to make themselves understood. I could get on with 
the Britishers, the French, the Belgians and the 
Russians, but the Turcos and Montenegrins were 
beyond me. Some of the Britishers could talk a 



A Visit from Mr. Gerard 267 

little French, and many of the Russians could. And 
quite a few of the French and Belgians could talk 
English, and one or two knew a little Russian. But 
no one in the crowd, except myself, knew more than 
one language except his own, so our talks were always 
tliree- or four-cornered, and the last man to get the 
news generally had it all pretty mixed by the time 
it got to him. 

It was while I was in the guard-house that Mr. 
Gerard, the American ambassador, visited the camp. 
He came to this camp about every six months, as a 
rule. Even in the German prison camps the men 
had somehow got information about Mr. Gerard's 
efforts to improve the terrible surroundings in which 
they lived. Some of the men at Diilmen had been 
confined in various other camps, and they told me that 
when Mr. Gerard visited these camps all that the 
men did for a week or so afterwards was to talk about 
his visit and what he had said to them. We knew 
Mr. Gerard had got the Germans to make conditions 
better in some of the worst hell-holes in Germany, 
and the men were always glad when he came. The}?^ 
felt they had something better to look forward to and 
some relief from the awful misery. 

Mr. Gerard was passing through the French bar- 
racks, and a man I knew told him there was an 
American there. The Germans did not want him 
to see me, but he put up an argument with the com- 
manding officer, and they finally said he could inter- 



268 Gunner Depew 

view me. I never was so glad to see anyone as I 
was to see hiim. The picture is still with me of his 
coming in the door. We talked for about an hour 
and a half, I guess, and then he got up to go, and he 
said I would hear from him in about three weeks. 
Just think what good news that was co me ! 

They let me out of the guard-house, and I cele- 
brated by doing all the damage to German sentries 
that I could. The men in the camps went wild when 
they learned that Ambassador Gerard was there, for 
they said he was the only man in Germany they could 
tell their troubles to. The reason was that he was 
strong for the men, no matter of what nationality, 
and put his heart into the work. I am one of those 
who cannot say enough good things about him. Like 
many others, if it had not been for Mr. Gerard, I 
should have been done for by now. 

A few days after this I was slow again as we were 
marching to the bread house, and the guard at the 
door tripped me. When I fell I hurt my wounds, 
which made me hot. Now, I had decided, on think- 
ing it over, that the best thing to do was to be good, 
since I was expecting to be released, and I thought 
it would be tough luck to be killed just before I was 
set free. But I had been in the American navy, and 
any garby of the United States would have done what 
I did. It must be the training we get, for when a 
dirty trick is tried on us we get very nervous with 
our hands and are not always able to control them. 



A Visit from Mr. Gerard 269 

So I went for the sentry and walloped him in 
the jaw. Then I received his bayonet through the 
fleshy part of the forearm. Most bayonet wounds 
we got were in the arm. But those arms were in 
front of our faces at the time. The sentries did not 
aim for our arms, you can bet on that. A wound 
of the kind I received would be nothing more than 
a white streak if properly attended to, but I had 
absolutely no attention for it, and it was a long time 
in healing. Even so, I was lucky, for another 
bayonet stroke just grazed my stomach. 

I had been at Diilmen for three weeks when we 
were transferred to Brandenburg, on the Havel, 
which is known to the prisoners as " The Hell Hole 
of Germany." It certainly is not too strong a name 
for it, either. 

On the way we changed trains at Osnabriick, and 
from the station platform I saw German soldiers fire 
with machine-guns on women and children who were 
rioting for food. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE HELL HOLE OF GERMANY 

On arriving at Brandenburg we were marched the 
three or four miles north-west to the camp. While 
we were tramping through the streets a woman 
walked alongside of us for quite a way, talking to the 
boys in English and asking them about the war. She 
said she did not believe anything the German papers 
printed. She said she was an Englishwoman from 
Liverpool and that, at the outbreak of the war, not 
being able to get out of Germany, she and her child- 
ren had been put in prison, and that every day for 
over a week they had put her through the third 
degree ; that her cliildren had been separated from 
her and that she did not know where they were. 

She walked along with us for some distance, until 
a sentry heard her say something not very compli- 
mentary to the Germans, and chased her away. 
When we arrived at the camp we were put into the 
receiving barracks and kept there six days. The 
condition of these barracks was such that you could 
not describe it. The floors were actually nothing 
but filth. Very few of the bunks remained : the rest 
had been torn down — for fuel, I suppose. 

270 



The Hell Hole of Germany 271 

The day we were transferred to the regular prison 
barracks four hundred Russians and Belgians were 
buried. Mbst of them had died from cholera, 
typhoid, and inoculations. We heard from the 
prisoners there before us that the Germans had come 
through the camps with word that there was an epi- 
demic of black typhus and cholera, and that the only 
thing for the men to do was to take the serum treat- 
ment to avoid catching these diseases. Most of the 
four hundred men had died from inoculation. They 
had taken the Germans' word, had been inoculated, 
and had died within nine hours. Which shows how 
foolish it is to believe a German. None of us had 
any doubt but that the serum was poisonous. 

The second day that we were in the regular camp 
the Germans strung barbed wire all round our bar- 
racks. They told as we had a case of black typhus 
among us. This was nothing more nor less than 
bluff, for not one of us had typhus ; but they put up 
the wire, nevertheless, and we were not allowed to 
go out. 

One day when I was loafing about our barracks 
door, not having anything particularly important to 
do, I packed a nice hard snowball and landed it neatly 
behind the ear of a little sentry not far away. When 
he looked around he did not blow his whistle, but be- 
gan hunting for the thrower. This was strange in a 
German sentry, and I thought he must be pretty 
good stuff. When he looked round, however, all he 



272 Gunner Depew 

saw was a man staggering as if he were drunk. The 
man was the one who had done the throwing all 
ri^ht, but the sentry could not be sure of it, for, 
surely, no man would stay out in the open and invite 
accidents like that. But still, who had done it? 

So I just kcptt on staggering, and the sentry came 
up to me and looked me over pretty well. Then I 
thought for the first time that things might go hard 
on me, but I reckoned that if I quit the play-acting 
it would be all over. So I staggered right up to the 
sentry and looked at him drunkenly, expecting every 
moment to get one from the bayonet. 

Buft he was so surprised that all he could do was 
to stare. So I stared back, pretending that I saw 
two of him, and otherwise acting foolish. Then, I 
guesis, he realised for the first time that the chances 
of anybody's being drunk in that camp were small — 
at lealst, for the prisoners. He was rubbing his ear 
all the time, but finally the thought gradually reached 
his brain and he began to laugh. I laughed, too, 
and the first thing you know he had me doing it 
again, that is, in make-believe. One snowball was 
enough, I supposed. 

I used to talk to him quite often after (that. We 
had no pariticular love for each other, but he wsls 
gamer than the other sentries, and he did not call 
me " ischweinhund " every time he saw me, so we got 
on very well together. His name must have been 
Schwartz, I guess, but it sounded like " Swatts " to 



The Hell Hole of Germany 273 

me, so Swatts he was, and I was "Chink " to hun, 
as everybody else called me that. 

One day he asked me whether I could speak 
French, and I said yes. Itahan? Yes. Russian? 
Yes. No matter what language he might have men- 
tioned, I would have said yes, because I could smell 
something in the wind, and I was curious. Then he 
told me that if I went to the hospital and worked 
there I might get better meals and would not have 
to go so far for them, and that my knowing all the 
languages I said I did would help me a great way 
towards getting the job. 

Evidently he had been told to get a man for the 
place, because he appointed me to it then and there. 
He put me to work right away. We went over to 
one of the barracks, where a case of sickness liad been 
reported, and found that the invalid was a Barbadoes 
negro named Jim, a fireman from the Voltaire. At 
one time Jim must have weighed 250 pounds;, but 
by this time he wais about two pounds lighter than a 
straw hat, but still black and full of pep. Light as 
he was, I was no " white hope," and it was all I 
could do to carry him to the hospital. Swatts kept 
right along behind me, and every time I would stop 
to rest he would poke me with a broom — ^the only 
broom I saw in Germany — ^and laugh and point to 
his ear. 

Then I thought it was a put-up job and that he 
was getting even with me, but I was in for it by liow, 



274 Gunner Depew 

and itJie best I could do was to go through with it. 
But I was all in when we reached the hospital. ThiC 
first thing I saw when we got in the door was another 
negro, also from Barbadoes, and as tall and as thin as 
Jim had once been short and fat. This black boy and I 
made a great team, but I never knew what his name 
was. I always called him Kate, because night and 
day he was whisthng the old song, '* Rate, Kate, 
Meet Me at the Garden Gate," or words to that 
effect. I have waked up many a night and heard 
that whistle just about at the same place as when I 
had fallen asleep. It would not have been so bad 
if he had known all of it. 

I took S watts 's broom and cleaned up, and then 
asked where the coal or wood was. This got a great 
laugh. It was quite humorous to the men who had 
shivered there for weeks, maybe, but to me it was 
about as funny as a cry for help. I got wood, 
though, before I had been there long. 

There was a great big cupboard, that looked more 
like a small house, built against the wall of the hos- 
pital barracks in one corner of the room, and not far 
from the stove. Kate was the only patient able to 
be on his feet, so I thought he would have to be my 
chief cook and bottle-washer for a while ; and, besides, 
there was something about him that made him look 
pretty valuable. I had not recognised his whistling 
yet, so Slim looked to be the right name for him. 

" Slim, what's that big cupboard for? " 



The Hell Hole of Germany 275 

" HowM I know? Nuthin' in it." 

" Slim, that would make a fine box for coal or 
wood, wouldn't it? " 

" Um. Whar de coal an' wood? " 

"I'm going out to take observations, Slim. 
Take the wheel while I'm gone, and keep your eye 
peeled for U-boats." So I sneaked out at the door 
and began looking round. 

Next to us was a vacated Russian barracks. And 
it did not take me long to see it, too. Back I posted 
to the hospital and Slim. 

*' Shm, what barracks are next to us? " 

" Russian burrucks, only dey ain't dere now. 
Been sick." 

" And you mean to tell me you don't know where 
to get w^ood ? ' ' 

" Sick men been in dem burrucks." 

" Sick men here, aren't there? Let's go." 

That did the trick. The black boy used to watch 
from the hospital windows until he saw the coast was 
cleai', then we would slip into the barracks next door, 
and he would watch again. When there was no 
sentry near enough to hear us, crash ! and out would 
come a dividing board from the bunks. When we 
had an armful apiece, and had broken them up to the 
right lengths, all we needed was a little more watch- 
ing, and then back to the hospital and the big cup- 
board. Later our men told me they used to watch 
the smoke that poured from the hospital chimney all 



276 Gunner Depew 

the time, and wonder where on earth we got thie 
wood. 

We got the same kind of food in the hospital that 
was served in the other barracks, and I would not 
have had any more than I used to except that occa- 
sionally some of the twenty-six patients could not 
eat their shai-e, and then, of course, it was mine. 
One day, though, we all had extra rations. 

Two Russian doctors came to visit us every day, 
and once they were foolish enough, or kind enough, 
to ask whetilier we had received our rations — we had 
received them earlier than usual and they were fin- 
ished at the time. Of course, I said no, so they 
ordered the Russian in the kitchen to dehver twenty- 
eight rations to us, which was not quite three loaves 
of bread. We were that much ahead that day, but it 
would not work when I tried the trick again. 

One day a German doctor came to the hospital 
barracks. He would not touch anything while he was 
there — not even open the door. All of the patients 
had little cards attached to their beds — charts of their 
condition. When the German wanted to see these 
charts the Russian doctors had to hold them for him. 

I was having a great time at the hospital, wreck- 
ing the barracks next door each day for wood, along 
with Kate, and getting a little more food sometimes, 
and was always nice and warm. I thought myself 
quite a pet. Compared with what I had been up 
against, it seemed like real comfort. But the more 



The Hell Hole of Germany 277 

food I got, the more I wanted. And it was food 
that brought me down, after all. 

Across from us was a barracks in which there 
were English officers, and somehow it seemed to me 
that they must have had a pull. Every now and then 
I saw what looked like vegetables, and bags of some- 
thing that much resembled brown flour. So I told 
Slim, or Kate, as I was calling him by then, and with 
him on guard, I sneaked out. After two or three 
false starts I got over our barbed wire and their 
barbed wire, and in through a window. 

There I saw carrots ! And wholemeal flour ! 

I took all I could carry, to divide up with Kate, 
and then began eating, so as not to waste anything. 
It was certainly some feast — the only thing besides 
mud bread and barley coffee and ' ' shadow ' ' soup 
that I had to eat in Germany. Then I started back 
to the hospital. I got over that barbed wire all right, 
and Kate gave me the "all clear " for our entangle- 
ments, but just as I was going over them a sentry 
nabbed me. At first I thought Kate had turned 
traitor, because we had had a little argument a short 
time before when I got tired of his whistling. But I 
concluded he would not have done that, and, besides, 
he knew I was bringing him something to eat. So 
the sentry must have sneaked up without Kate's 
seeing him. Who got the carrots and wholemeal 
flour I was carrjdng I do not know. The sentries 
kicked me all the way back to my old barracks. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

DESPAIR — AND FREEDOM 

While I was working at the hospital conditions at 
my old barmcks had been getting worse and worse. 
Very few of the men were absolutely right in the 
head, I giiesis, and almost all had given up hope of 
ever getting out ahve. Though they put up a good 
front to the Huns, they really did not care a great 
deal what happened to them. The only thing to 
think about was the minute they were living in. 

The day I came back two Englishmen, who had 
suddenly gone mad, began to fight each other. It 
was the most terrible fight I have ever seen. It was 
some time before the rest of us could make them 
quit, because at first we did not know they were 
crazy. When we had them down, however, they 
were scratched and bitten and pounded from head to 
foot. Both bled from the nose all that night, and 
towards morning one of them became sane for a few 
minutes and then died. The other was taken away 
by the Germans, still crazy. 

Another time an Australian came into our bar- 
racks, and with the utmost gravity told us that he 
was well in with the German officers and that he had 

278 



Despair— and Freedom 279 

been to dinner with them, and had had turkey, 
potatoes, coffee, butter, eggs, sugar in his coffee, and 
all the luxuries you could think of. We just sat and 
stared at him. It seemed impossible that any of our 
own men would have the sauce to torture us like 
that, and yet we could not believe that it had really 
happened. Finally, one fellow could stand it no 
longer. He was nothing but skin and bone, but he 
grabbed a dividing board and there were just two 
waUops — the board hit the Australian's head and the 
head hit the floor. Then half a dozen more bounced 
on him and gave him a real licking. When he came 
to he forgot all about the wonderful dinner he did 
not have. 

Not long after this the Russian doctors proved to 
♦ the Germans that there was no black typhus in our 
barracks, and we were allowed the freedom of the 
camp, except that we could not visit the Russian 
ban*acks. That wais no hardship to me, nor to the 
rest of us, except one chap from the Cavihrian 
Range, who had a special pal among the Russians 
tha:t he wanted to see. And of course, when it was 
forbidden, he wanted to see him all the more. 

A day or two after the order I was standing out- 
side the barracks door when I saw this fellow come 
out with a dividing board in liis hand. I thought he 
was going to smash somebody with it, so I stood by. 
But he stooped over and jammed one- end of the 
board against the threshold of the door, scratched 



28o Gunner Depew 

the ground with the farther end of the board, and 
measured again. He kept this up, length by length, 
in the direction of the Russian barracks. The sen- 
try in the yard stopped and stared at him, but the 
fellow kept on, paying no attention to anybody. 
Pretty soon he was by the sentry's feet, and I 
thought any minute the latter would give him the 
butt, but he only stared a while and let him pass. 
That lad measured the whole distance to the Russiian 
barracks, went inside, stayed a while, and calmly 
strolled out with the board under his arm. When 
he reached our barracks again he told us he had found 
a vifno mine. What he really had found was some- 
thing not so unusual — ^a thick-skulled German. 

There was a lot of bamboo near the Russian bar- 
racks, and the Russians made baskets out of it and 
turned them in to the Germans. For this they got 
all the good jobs in the kitchen, and had a fine chance 
to get more to eat. But they were treated like dogs 
— that is, all except the few Cossacks that were 
among them. The Huns knew that a Cossack never 
forgets, and will get revenge for the slightest mal- 
treatment, even if it means his death. I have seen 
sentries turn aside from the beat they were walking, 
and get out of the way when they saw a Cossack 
coming. There were very few Cossacks there, how- 
ever. I do not think they let themselves get 
captured very often. 

We had roll call every morning, of course, and 



Despair— and Freedom 281 

were always mustered in front of our barracks, the 
middle of the line being right at the barracks door. 
Sometimes, when the cold got too much for them, the 
men nearest the door would duck into the barracks. 
As they left the ranks the other men would close up 
and this kept the line even, with the centre still oppo- 
site 'the barracks door. Finally, almost all of the 
men would be in the barracks, and by the time the 
roll was over not one remained outside. This seemed 
to annoy the German officers a, great deal, but they 
did not punish us for it until we had been doing it 
for some time. 

For several days I had noticed that someone else 
answered for two men who had disappeared ; at least, 
I had not seen them for some time. I did not think 
much about it or ask any questions, and I did not 
hear anyone else talk about it, but I was pretty sure 
the two men, a Russian and a Britisher, had escaped. 
But they were marked present at roll call, and all 
accounted for. EverjTthing went along very well 
until one day when the name "Fontaine" got by 
without being answered. Fontaine was a French 
fireman from the Cambrian Range, and that was the 
first time he had not been present. We saw what 
was coming, and we began to get pretty sore at Fon- 
taine for not telling us, so we could answer for him 
and keep the escape covered. 

The minute they found our count one short they 
blew the whistle's, and a squad of sentries came up 



282 Gunner Depew 

as an extra guaj-d. They counted us again, but by 
sneaking behind the line and closing up again we 
made the count all right except for one man — 
Fiontadne. We would have tried to cover up foT him, 
except that they had already discovered his absence. 
Now, we thought, they will nab Fontaine but will not 
discover the escape of the others. 

But evidently they suspected something, for soon 
they brought over a petty officer from the Nomad, 
who had not been witli us before, and forced him to 
call the roll from the mustering papers while they 
watched the men as they answ^ered. Then they dis- 
coveored that two more besides Fontaine were miss- 
ing, and began to search for them. 

The other two ispoke German and had been miss- 
ing for at least three days and, I think, had escaped 
by this time. They were not returned while I was 
at Brandenburg. 

This was about 7 a.m. They marched us down 
to the little lake, where the cold was much greater, 
and kept us there until 5 p.m., without food or drink. 
At about 8 that morning they found Fontaine in a 
French barracks, and kicked him all the way to the 
lake where we were. 

All day long we stood there, falHng one b}^ one 
and getting kicked or beaten each time, vmtil we 
dragged ourselves up again. Two or three died — I 
do not know the exact number. But we had enough 
strength, when ordered back to the barracks, to kick 



Despair— and Freedom 283 

Fontaine ahead of iis all the way. We did not get 
anything to eat until 7 the next morning — ^twenty- 
foiir hours without food and water, ten of whieh were 
spent in the isnow without any protection from the 
cold and w^nd. No wonder we kicked Fontaine for 
bringing this punishment on us and endangering the 
two who had escaped — he had simply strolled over to 
the French barracks and forgotten to return. 

Now, the food received was just about enough 
to keep us alive. I suppose, with true kultur, the 
Huns had calculated just how much it would take 
to keep a man on this side of the starvation line, and 
gave us that much and no more. So we were 
always famished — always hungrier than you probably 
ever have been. But sometimes when we were 
ravenously hungry and could not hold out longer, we 
would trade rations. 

One man would trade his whole ration for the 
next day for a half ration to-day. That is, if you 
were so hungry that you thought you could not last 
out the day on your regular s^hare, you ^vould tell 
someone else that if he gave you half his share to- 
day you would give ihim all of yours to-morrow. If 
he was a gambler, he would take you up. That is, 
he would gamble on his being alive to-morrow, not 
on your keeping your word. He knew you would 
come across with your ration the next day, and like 
as not, if you tried to keep it from him he would 
kill you, and nobody would blame him. 



284 Gunner Depew 

It certainly was hard when the next day canie to 
give up your whole ration and go without that day. 
But I never saw a man hedge, or even speak of it. 
And we did not have any food pirates among us 
either : we were not captainsof industry by any means. 

There were times when some of us could not 
eat certain of our rations. For instance, many and 
many a time I was as hungry as anybody could be, 
and I wanted to eat my mud bread, but it seemed 
as if I could not get it into my mouth. Then I 
would trade it with someone else for his *' shadow " 
soup or his barley coffee. 

Men were dying every day in Brandenburg, and 
after each death the senior men of that barracks 
would detail twelve of their number to go out for 
half an hour and dig the grave, while others made 
little crosses, on which they wrote or carved the 
man's name, when he was captured, and his regi- 
ment or ship. In the middle of the cross were always 
the letters, R.I.P.— " Rest in Peace." 

One time we were ordered to report to the Ger- 
man doctors for a serum treatment of some kind — 
to receive an injection, in other words. There was 
no choice aibout it this time, as we were simply herded 
together to the hospital barracks. Now, I knew 
what these things were like, and how brutal the Ger- 
man doctors were in giving an injection, so I wanted 
to be the very first man and not have to witness the 
other men getting theirs. 



Despair— and Freedom 285 

So I pushed up to the head of the line, with the 
crew of the Nomad, and by the time we got to the 
hospital was the very first man in line. But the 
sentry threw me back, and there were several men 
ahead of me. 

Each of them bared his chest, and the doctors 
slashed them across the breast with a very thin knife, 
so you can see that it was very painful. When it 
came ito my turn they slashed me three times in the 
shape of a triangle just to one side of the breast. 
And that was all there was to it : no injection, 
nothing on the knife that I could see. But it hurt 
like hell. 

Now, I do not know what the idea was. Every 
man of us was dizzy for the rest of the day, and 
could not do anything but lie about the barracks. 
And hardly any of us bled a drop, though the gashes 
were deep. I do not think we had any blood in us 
to run, and that is the truth of it. It was just 
another German trick that no one could explain. 

When my three weeks were up and I had not 
heard from Mr. Gerard, I was just about ready to 
go down to the lake and pick out a vacant spot and 
lie down in it. I really do not think I could have 
lasted two weeks longer. And just about that time, 
as I was walking back to barracks one day, a French- 
man showed me a German newspaper, and there, 
in large type, on the top of the first page, it said 
that Mr. Gerard had left the country, or jvas getting 



286 Gunner Depew 

ready to leave.* They had to drag me the rest of 
the way to the barracks, and throw snow on me 
before I came to. 

I do not know what happened during the next 
few days. 

But a week or so later the Spanish ambassador 
and four German officers and Swatts came to our 
barracks, and the ambassador told me I would be 
released ! It was all I could do to keep from faint- 
ing again. Then Swatts asked me in English if I 
had anything to say about the treatment in the 
camp, and I began to think maybe it was a plant 
of some kind, so all I said was, " When will I get 
out of here.^ " and he said, " Why, you will be re- 
leased to-morrow." 

I did not wait to 'hear any more, but rushed into 
the barracks again, singing and whistling and yell- 
ing as loud as I could. The boys told me my face 
was very red, and I guess what little blood I had in 
my body had rushed to my head, because I could 
hardly walk for a few minutes. 

Then the men began to think I was crazy, and 
none of them believed I would really be released, 

* Gunner Depew's interview with Mr. Gerafd took place at the 
Diilmen prison camp on or about February 1, 1917. On February 3 
the State Department demanded the release of sixty-two Americans 
captured on British vessels and held as prisoners in Germany. On 
the same day President Wilson severed diplomatic relations with 
Germany. Ambassador Gerard left Germany exactly one week later. 
The newspaper that Gunner Depew saw must have been issued after 
February 10. It was not until March 9, 1917, however, that Gunner 
Depew was actually released from Brandenburg. — Editor's Note. 



Despair— and Freedom 287 

but that I was going to be sent to the mines, as so 
many were. But I believed it, and I just sat there 
on my bunk and began to dream of the food I would 
get and what I would eat first, and so on. 

I did not go to sleep that night — ^just walked 
from barracks to barracks until they chased (me away, 
and then walked up and down in my own barracks 
the rest of the night. When I got to the Russian 
barracks and told the two doctors my news, they 
would not believe me at all, although they kne\v 
there had been some important visitor at the camp. 

But when I walked out of their door I said, 
"Dobra vetshav," which means "Good night!" 
Then they must have believed me, for they called me 
back, and all the men gave me addresses of people I 
should ^^Tite to, in case I should get away. 

They were all talking at once, and one of the 
doctors got very excited and got down on his knees 
with his hands in the air. " Albert," he said, " if 
you have the God-given luck to get out of Germany 
— not for my sake, but for the sake of us who are 
here in this hell hole, promise me you will tell all the 
pelople wherever you go what they are doing to us 
here. Tell them not to send money, for we can't 
eat money, and not meat — ^just bread, bread, 
bread " 

And when I looked round all the men were sitting 
on their beds, crying and tearing their hair and say- 
ing, "bread, bread, bread," over and over again. 



288 Gunner Depew 

Then each tried to give me something, as if to say 
thast even if they did not get out, perhaps their but- 
ton, or belt, or skull-cap, would get back to 
civilisation. 

When I left their barracks I began to cry because 
it did not seem possible that I was going away, and 
already I could see them starving slowly, ju^ as I 
had been starving. 

Next morning a sentry came to my barracks, 
called out my name and took me to the commander 
of the camp. They searched me and then ordered 
me back to barracks again. Then the men all 
thought they were just playing a joke on me, and 
they said so. 

The same thing happened next day, and when one 
of the men said that probably I would be put up 
againsJt a wall and shot I began to feel shaky, I can 
tell you. 

But the third morning, after they had searched 
me, the commander said, " Well, you'll have to have 
a bath before you leave the country," and I was so 
glad that I did not mind about the bath, although I 
remembered the last one I had, and it did not agree 
very well with me. After the bath they escorted me 
out into the rood. 

There were four sentries with me, but not Swatts, 
nor did I see him anywhere, for which I was sorry. 
But all the boys came down to the barbed wire, or to 
the galte, and some were crying, and others were 



Despair— and Freedom 289 

cheering, and all were very much excited. But after 
a minute or two they got together again and the last 
thing I heard was the song about packing up your 
old kit bag, and then, "Are we downhearted? — 
No! " They were certainly game lads. 

They did not talce me straight to the station, but 
led me through all the streets they could find, and, 
as usual, the women were there with the bricks and 
spit. But I did not mind : I was used to it, and, 
besides, ilt was ^the last time. So I just grinned at 
them and thought that I was better off than 
they, because they had to stay in the hole called 
Germany. 

I was still half naked, but I did not mind the two- 
hours' wait on the sitation platform. I noticed a little 
sign that read, " BerUn 25 miles north," and that 
was Ithe first time I had much of an idea where 
Brandenburg was. 

When we gc^t into the compartment and I found 
that the windows were not smashed, I could not be- 
lieve it at first, until I remembered that this was not 
a prisoner-train. We had a forty-eight hours' ride 
to Lindau, which is on the Lake of Constance, and 
no food or water in that time. But still I did not 
mind it much. At Lindau they conveyed me into a 
little house and took away all the addresses that I 
had, and then marched me over to the boat which 
crosses the lake. 

As I Waited up the gangway the last thing I re- 



290 Gunner Depew 

ceived in Gennany reached me — a crack across the 
back with a rifle ! 

The women and children on the dock had their 
fis^ts up and were yeUing, " American swine ! " But 
I just laughed ait them. And when I looked round 
the boat and saw no German soldiers — only Swiss 
civilians — I rubbed my eyes and could not believe it. 
When they gave me bread, which was what I had de- 
cided I wanted most of all when I was in the camp, I 
thought I was in heaven sure enough ; and when, 
forty-five minutes later, we arrived at Rorschach in 
Switzerland, I knew I was free. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

BACK IN THE STATES 

After I larrived at Rorschach I was taken to a large 
hall where I remained over night. There were three 
Americian flags on the walls, the first I had seen for a 
long time. I certainly did a fine job of sleeping that 
night. I think I slept twice as fast to make up for 
lost time. 

In the morning I had a regular banquet for a 
breakfast — eggs, coffee, bread and a small glaisis of 
wine. Even now that breakfast is still easy to taste, 
and I sometimes wis'h I could enjoy another meal as 
much. Biilt I guesis I never shall have one that will 
go as good. 

After breakfast they took me out on the steps of 
the hall and photographed me, and presently I went 
to ithe railway station, with a young moib at my heels. 
It reminded me a bit of Germany — but it was so dif- 
ferent. Instead of bricks and bayonet jabs, the mob 
gave me cigarettes and chocolate and sandwiches. 
They also handed me questions — enough to keep me 
buisy answering to this day if I could. 

I travelled by train to Zurich, and at every 
station there were more presents and more cameras 

291 



292 Gunner Depew 

and more questions. At St. Gall they had cards 
ready for me to write on, and then they were going 
to send them to anybody I wished. The station at 
Zurich was packed with people, and I began to think 
I was a star for sure. 

Francis B. Keene, the American consul-general 
at Zurich, and his assistant, were there to meet me. 
We walked to his office and, all the way, the cameras 
were clicking and the chocolates and cigarettes piling 
up until I felt hke Santa Claus on December 24th. 
After a little talk with Mr. Keene, he took me to the 

Stussehof Hotel, where my wounds were dressed' 

and, beheve me, they needed it. 

Certainly the Swiss treated me well. Every time 
I came out on the streets they followed me and used 
to give me money. But the money might just as 
well have been leather or lead— I could not spend it. 
Whenever I wanted to buy anything the shopkeeper 
would make me a present of it. 

I also visited the Hotel Baur au Lac, the home of 
Mr. and Mrs. Harold McCormick, of Chicago, who 
were doing such fine work with the Red Cross and in 
looking after the Belgian and French refugees in 
Switzerland. It was a dinner much appreciated by 
one guest, at least. I need not mention his name, 
but he ate so much that he felt ashamed afterwards. 

I do not think he got into trouble for it, though, 
for Mr. and Mrs. McCormick afterwards each gave 
him a valuable present, which he needed badly. After 



Back in the States 293 

the dinner Mrs. McCormiek made a little patriotic 
speech, in which she said that the Huns would never 
trample on the United States flag, and some other 
things that made all the Americans present very 
proud, especially Mr. Keene and myself. So you 
can see I was having a great time. 

Yet the crowd I drew was ncything to the mob that 
followed a big negro about. I do not know who he 
was, and when we talked I could not understand him, 
but beyond quesJtion he was the centre of attraction, 
the observed of all observers. Wherever I saw a big 
crowd of people I knew he was in the middle of it, 
be was sure to have both hands loaded with presents. 
I supposed thait negroes were scarce in Switzerland. 
What a treat it would be for a Swiss to visit the 
*' black belt " down South ! 

Nevertheless, I was having a little trouble all the 
time for this reason : there was quite a number of 
Germans interned in Zurich, and they went about in 
uniform. Now, when I saw one of these birds and 
remembered what had been happening to me only a 
short time before, my hands began to itch. Believe 
me, it wais not '* Good morning " that I said to them. 
I enjoyed it all rigiht ; they were not in squads and 
bad no arms, so it was hand to hand, and pie for me. 

However, Mr. Keene did not like it, I guess, for 
he called me to his office one morning and talked to 
me seriously for a while, and I promised to be good. 
" You're supposed to be neutral," he said. And I 



294 Gunner Depew 

said, " Yes, and Avhen I was torpedoed and taken 
prisoner I was supposed to be neutral, too." But I 
said I would noit look for trouble any more, and I 
started back to the hotel. 

Well, no sooner was I under way than a Hun 
private came along and began to laugh at me. My 
hands itched again, and I could not help but hit out a 
few. We went round and round for a while, and 
then the Hun reversed and went down instead. Mr. 
Keene saw us, or heard about it, so he told me I had 
better go to Berne. 

So off I went with my passport. But the same 
thing happened in Berne. I tried very hard, but I 
just could not keep my hands off the Germans. So 
I guess everybody thought it was a good thing to bid 
me good-bye. Anyway, I was shipped to France, 
going direct to St. Nazaire and from there to Brest. 

I made a short trip to Hull, in Yorkshire, with a 
letter from ;a man at Brandenburg to his wife. She 
w^as not at home, but I left the letter and retiu-ned 
to France. I was in France altogether about three 
weeks, and then went to Barcelona, in Spain. 

There I met Jack Johnson, the negro prize- 
fighter, and attended a bull-fight with him. He was 
in the insurance business in Spain, but did not seem 
to be very popular. About the first thing he asked 
me was, " How's Chicago? " and as I had never been 
there I oould not give him very much news. I did 
not advise him to return to the States. 



Back in the States 295 

At last I took passage for the States on the C. 
Lopez y Lopez, a Spanish merchantman. We had 
mostly " Spigs " on board, which is navy slang for 
Spaniards. Almost every one of them had a large 
family of children and a raft of pets. We sailed 
by Valencia, Almeria, Malaga, Cadiz, and Las 
Palmas in the Canary Islands. When we left Las 
Palmas we had a regular menagerie aboard 
— ^parrots, canaries, dogs, monkeys and various 
beasts. The steerage of that boat was some sight, 
believe me. 

We had boat drill all the way across, of course, 
anid from the way those Spigs rushed about I knew 
that if a submarine got us, the only thing that would 
be saved would be monkeys. But we did not even 
have a false alarm all the way over. 

I larrived in New York during the month of July, 
1917 — two years and a half from the time I decided 
to go abroad to the War Zone to get some excite- 
ment. I got it, and no mistake. New York har- 
bour and the old Statue of Liberty looked mig'hty 
good to me, j^ou can bet. 

So here I am, and sometimes I have to pinch 
myself to be sure of it. I certainly enjoy the food 
and warmth I get here, and, except for an occasional 
pro-Gemian, I have no trouble with anybody. My 
wounds break open now and again, and I am often 
bothered inside on account of the gas I swallowed. 
They say I cannot get back into the service. It is 



296 Gunner Depew 

rough luck to be knocked out before our own boys 
get into the scrap. 

But I do not know. I am twenty-three years old 
and probably have a lot to live yet. I guess I ought 
to settle down and be quiet for a while, but comfort- 
able as I am, I think I will have to go to sea again. 
I think of it many times, and each time it is harder 
to stay ashore. 



Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.4 

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